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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 
EDITED Br JOHN MORLET 

MATTHEW ARNOLD 



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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 



MATTHEW ARNOLD 



BY 

HERBERT W. PAUL 






THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
I902 

All rights reserved 












THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Cop.es Received 

AUG. 4 1902 


Copyright 


ENTRf 


CLASS 1 CVXXC, No. 

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COP> 



Copyright, 1902, 
By THE MA CM ILL AN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped July, 1902. 





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Norfoooto I3tt93 

J. S. Cushing £ Co. Berwick Sc Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 






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PREFATORY NOTE 

The only authority for the events of Matthew Arnold's 
life, besides Mr. Richard Garnett's excellent article 
in the Dictionary of National Biography, is the collec- 
tion of his letters in two volumes, edited by Mr. George 
Russell (Macrnillan, 1895). Sir Joshua Fitch's account 
of Mr. Arnold's public services as Inspector of Schools 
in the seventh volume of Great Educators (Heinemann) 
is admirably clear, and Mr. Burnett Smart's Bibli- 
ography (The Dry den Press, 1892) cannot be over- 
praised. Professor Saintsbury's lively and learned 
study in Messrs. Blackwood's Modem English Writers 
(1899) is rather unsympathetic on the theological and 
political side, but full of interest and suggestion. I 
have sometimes owed most to Mr. Saintsbury when 
I have been least able to agree with him. 

H. W. P. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Introductory .1 

CHAPTEE II 

Rtgrt and Oxford 6 

CHAPTEE III 

Early Poems 16 

CHAPTER IV 
Work and Poetry 30 

CHAPTEE V 
The Oxford Chair 61 

CHAPTEE VI 

Essays in Criticism 72 

CHAPTER VII 
The End of the Professorship 91 

CHAPTER VIII 

The New Poems 99 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

CHAPTER IX 

PAGE 

Education 106 

CHAPTER X 
Mr. Arnold's Philosophy 113 

CHAPTER XI 

Mr. Arnold's Theology ...... 130 

CHAPTER XLL 

Mr. Arnold's Politic :b 145 

CHAPTER XIII 
The Aftermath 159 

CHAPTER XIV 
Conclusion 170 

Im>i i 179 



MATTHEW ARNOLD 



MATTHEW AKNOLD 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

The fourteen years which have elapsed since Matthew 
Arnold's death have added greatly to the number of 
his readers, especially the readers of his poems. No 
poet of modern times, perhaps no English poet of any 
time, appeals so directly and so exclusively to the cul- 
tivated taste of the educated classes. To say that a 
classical education was necessary for understanding 
him would perhaps be to go too far. But a capacity 
for appreciating form and style, the charm of rhythm 
and the beauty of words, is undoubtedly essential. 
It may be said of Mr. Arnold with truth, and it is his 
thief praise, that the more widely mental culture 
spreads, the higher his fame will be. He was not, 
indeed, a profound thinker. He did not illuminate, 
like Wordsworth, with a single flash, the abysses of 
man's nature, and the inmost recesses of the human 
soul. He was not, as Plato was, a spectator of all 
time and all existence. His aim was, as he said of 
Sophocles, to see life steadily, and see it whole. But 
he saw it as a scholar and a man of letters. He 
interpreted greater minds than his own. He almost 
fulfilled his ideal. He knew, so far at least as the 

B 1 



2 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

Western world is concerned, the best that had been 
said and thought in all ages. Next to Milton, he was 
the most learned of English poets. 

How far Matthew Arnold will suffer from having 
been too much the child of his own age, it is as yet 
too soon to say. The " Zeit-Geist " has its limitations. 
It is the spirit of wisdom, not the spirit of a day, that 
is justified of all her children. " Thyrsis " is a very 
beautiful poem, not much less beautiful than "Ado- 
nais," though very unlike it. But Clough was not 
Keats. Keats is near to every one of us, while Clough 
is already far away. To Mr. Arnold, however, Clough 
was not merely a personal friend. lie was the embodi- 
ment of Oxford in the thirties and forties, of a special 
type now rare, if not extinct. Matthew Arnold's 
passionate love of Oxford has inspired some of his 
noblest verse, and some of his most musical prose. 
All Oxford men know, or used to know, the exquisite 
sentences about the beautiful city with her dreaming 
towers, breathing the last enchantment of the middle 
age. It was the unreformed Oxford which Matthew 
Arnold knew, and he represented the high-water mark 
of what it could do. The " grand old fortifying classi- 
cal curriculum " at which he laughed, and in which he 
believed, was seen at its best in the Oxford of those 
days. There was no " specialising." There were 
classics, and there were mathematics, and there was 
the river, and there was Headington Hill with Shot- 
over beyond it. If that did not satisfy a man, he 
must have been hard to please. At any rate, he was 
not entitled to take a degree in Tamil, with a school 
and examiners all to himself. 

Education was the business of Matthew Arnold's 



i.] INTRODUCTORY 3 

life. He understood it in the broadest sense. There 
was nothing narrow, technical, or pedantic about his 
scholarship or his criticism. But in the proper sense 
of a much abused term his work is academic. It is 
steeped in, one might say saturated with, culture. It 
was written by a scholar for scholars, and only scholars 
can fully appreciate it. Matthew Arnold fulfilled the 
precept of Horace. He turned over his Greek models 
by day and by night. He brought everything to the 
classical touchstone. Whatever was not Greek was 
barbarian. "Except," wrote Sir Henry Maine, in a 
moment of rare enthusiasm, "except the blind forces 
of nature, nothing moves in this world which is not 
Greek in its origin." Such was substantially Mr. 
Arnold's creed, though as his father's son he recog- 
nised that Hebraism entered with Hellenism into the 
structure of the Christian Church. 

Yet both as a poet and as a critic Matthew Arnold 
was essentially a man of his time. He was singularly 
receptive of ideas, even when they were ephemeral. 
He loved to dabble in politics, but the best parts of 
his political writings are the quotations from Burke. 
He did more than dabble in theology. He took the 
doctors of the Tubingen school for apostles, and 
treated a phase of Biblical speculation as if it were 
permanent truth. He had no sympathy with dry and 
minute criticism of detail, like Bishop Colenso's. He 
addicted himself to Ewald aud to Renan. He threw 
himself into the Liberal reaction against Tractarian- 
ism, whose attitude to the Great First Cause has been 
described by a satirist in the memorable line — 

"Philosophy is lenient ; he may go." 



4 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

Matthew Arnold's literary criticism, once regarded 
by young enthusiasts as a revelation, has long since 
taken a secure place in English letters. Like his 
poetry, unlike his theology and his politics, it has 
original and intrinsic value. It is penetrating as well 
as brilliant, conscientious as well as imaginative. 
Matthew Arnold may be said to have done for 
literature almost what Buskin did for art. He re- 
minded, or informed, the British public that criticism 
was a serious thing ; that good criticism was just as 
important as good authorship ; that it was not a 
question of individual taste, but partly of received 
authority, and partly of trained judgment. His own 
masters, besides the old Greeks, were chiefly Goethe 
and Sainte-Beuve. But few critics have been so thor- 
oughly original, and still fewer have had so large a 
share of the " daemonic " faculty, the faculty which 
awakens intelligent enthusiasm in others. Essays in 
Criticism is one of the indispensable books. Not to 
have read it is to be ignorant of a great intellectual 
event. 

In his double character of poet and critic, Matthew 
Arnold may be called our English Goethe. This is 
not to put the two men on a level ; for, of course, one 
could not without absurdity talk of Goethe as a Ger- 
man Arnold. Goethe is one of the world's poets. 
Matthew Arnold is little known to those who do not 
speak the English tongue. But among them his repu- 
tation widens, and will widen, as knowledge and the 
love of books spread through all classes of society. 
To all who care for things of the mind his work must 
ever be dear. Something of his own radiant and sym- 
pathetic personality pervades all his writings, except 



i,] INTRODUCTORY 6 

perhaps when he is dealing with Dissenters. It 
would have been well if he had applied the critical 
pruning-knife to the exuberant mannerism which 
sometimes disfigures his style. The repetition of 
pet phrases is a literary vice. But Matthew Arnold 
is more than strong enough to live in spite of his 
faults. His best poetry, and his best prose, are 
among the choicest legacies bequeathed by the nine- 
teenth century to the twentieth. If they belong to 
an age, they are the glory of it, for they show what 
golden ore it could extract, and hand down to the 
future, from the buried accumulations of the past. 



CHAPTER II 

RUGBY AND OXFORD 

Mattiiew Arnold was born at Laleham, near Staines, 
in the county of Middlesex, on Christmas Eve, 1822. 
Laleham is situated on the Thames, for which from his 
earliest years he had a passionate love. His father, 
Dr. Arnold of Rugby, the famous schoolmaster, had 
nine children, of whom Matthew was the eldest son. 
Mr. Thomas Arnold, however, did not become Dr. 
Arnold, or go to Rugby, till 1828. In 1822 he was 
taking private pupils, and forming the theories of 
education which he afterwards carried out in a more 
conspicuous field. His wife, born Mary Penrose, who 
lived till 1873, having survived her husband more than 
thirty years, was a woman of remarkable character and 
intellect, with whom Matthew kept up to the day of 
her death a mentally sympathetic as well as personally 
affectionate correspondence. When the family re- 
moved to Rugby, Matthew was five, but two years 
afterwards he returned to Laleham as the pupil of his 
uncle, the Reverend John Buckland. The country 
round Rugby is, as Dr. Arnold used pathetically to 
complain, among the dullest and ugliest in England. 
As a contrast he took a house at Fox How, near 
Grasmere, on the Rotha, where he spent most of the 
holidays with his wife and children. The eldest boy 

6 



chain ii.] RUGBY AND OXFORD 7 

thus grew up under the shadow of "Wordsworth, whose 
brilliant and penetrating interpreter he was destined 
to become. In August 1836, being then thirteen and 
a half, Matthew was sent to Winchester, of which 
Dr. Moberly, an elegant scholar, long afterwards 
Bishop of Salisbury, had just been appointed head- 
master. Dr. Arnold was himself a Wykehamist, and 
had a high opinion of his old school. But after a 
year, in August 1837, Matthew was removed from 
Winchester to be under his father's eye in the school- 
house at Rugby, where he remained until he went up 
to Oxford in 1841. 

Bugby under Arnold has been made familiar to 
millions of readers by Tom Brown's School Days. 
When Aruold was a candidate, Dr. Hawkins, the 
Provost of Oriel, prophesied that if elected he would 
revolutionise the public schools. He certainly revolu- 
tionised Bugby. When he came there, it was little 
more than an ordinary grammar school with boarders. 
When he died, it was one of the most famous and pop- 
ular schools in England. The monitorial system was 
not really his invention. He introduced it from Win- 
chester. But he invested it with a moral significance 
which had not previously belonged to it, and he 
leavened the whole school by his own powerful person- 
ality. As his accomplished biographer, Dean Stanley, 
says, " Throughout, whether in the school itself, or in 
its after effects, the one image that we have before us 
is not Bugby, but Arnold." Matthew Arnold bore very 
little resemblance to his stern Puritanical father. 
Dr. Arnold was in deadly earnest about everything, 
and was wholly devoid of humour. He was always 
declaiming against the childishness of boys, which 



8 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

after all is not a bad thing, and better than the 
premature mannishness which the monitorial system 
encourages. But he was in his way a great man. He 
had extraordinary force of character and strength of 
will. He had a magnetic influence upon boys. He 
was absolutely single-minded and sincere. His piety 
was deep and genuine, quite without suspicion of cant 
or conventionalism. His classical scholarship was not 
only sound and thorough, but broad, robust, and 
philosophical. As a teacher he stood high, as a 
preacher higher. There have been few better writers 
of English prose than Dr. Arnold, and it is perhaps his 
high literary sense which was his most distinctive 
bequest to his son. In a letter to his old pupil 
Vaughan, afterwards Master of the Temple, Dr. 
Arnold says: "There is an actual pleasure in contem- 
plating so perfect a management of so perfect an 
instrument as is exhibited in Plato's language, even if 
the matter were as worthless as the words of Italian 
music; whereas the sense is only less admirable in 
many places than the language." But Thucydides was 
of course his favourite author; and the general reader, 
as distinguished from the philological student, can 
have at this day no better guide to the greatest of all 
historians than Dr. Arnold. 

Dr. Arnold was, says Dean Stanley, "the elder 
brother and playfellow of his children." In that fine 
poem with the unfortunate metre, " Rugby Chapel," 
the son puts it rather differently: — 

" If, in the paths of the world, 
Stones might have wounded thy feet, 
Toil or dejection have tried 
Thy spirit, of that we say 



it.] RUGBY AND OXFORD 9 

Nothing ! To us thou wert still 
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm. 
Therefore to thee it was given 
Many to save with thyself ; 
And, at the end of thy day, 
O faithful shepherd ! to come, 
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand." 

The thought expressed in these lines, the idea of a 
good man not content with saving his own soul, but 
devoting himself also to the salvation of others, is 
repeated in one of Matthew Arnold's most touching 
letters to his mother many years after his father's 
death. It was a singularly delightful trait in a most 
endearing character, that Mr. Arnold always in writ- 
ing to her dwelt upon what "Papa" would have 
thought of things if he had been alive. Dr. Arnold 
died in 1842; and he was, thought his son, the first 
English clergyman who could speak as freely upon 
religious subjects as if he had been a layman. He 
was, however, strictly orthodox in all the essential 
doctrines of the Christian faith. He was suspected of 
heresy on no better grounds than his dislike of the 
Oxford Movement, which was strong, and his know- 
ledge of German, which was thorough. He took the 
Liberal side in the first Hampden controversy, but 
the charges against Dr. Hampden completely broke 
down. In politics he was a decided, though indepen- 
dent Whig, and he wrote a pamphlet in favour of 
Catholic Emancipation. Yet he held as firmly as Mr. 
Gladstone once held the theory of a Christian state, 
and he consistently opposed the enfranchisement of 
the Jews. In one respect he was far in advance of his 
age. " Woe," he said, " to the generation which inhab- 



10 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

its England when the coal-fields are exhausted, and the 
National Debt has not been paid." Although he died 
four years before the Repeal of the Com Laws, he was 
a staunch advocate of free exchange. It is impossible 
not to trace the influence of the father in the politics 
of the son. 

We have the authority of Matthew Arnold's oldest 
and most intimate friend, Lord Coleridge, for the fact, 
which might perhaps have been surmised, that between 
father and son there was more affection than sympathy. 
Dr. Arnold abhorred "mere cleverness," and humour 
appeared to him a rather profane indiscretion. His 
eldest son was excessively clever, and full of a gaiety 
which he never at any time of life made the smallest 
attempt to subdue. Lord Coleridge hints that there 
were collisions between them, and one can partly 
believe it. But he adds that when the doctor had 
trouble, as even schoolmasters sometimes have, he 
found comfort in the filial piety of one whose genius 
he did not live to acknowledge. The only poem of 
Matthew Arnold's which his father saw was " Alario 
at Rome," recited in Rugby School on the 12th of June 
1840. The motto from ChUde Harold, prefixed to this 
composition, prepares one for its character, which is 
distinctly Byronic. It is not much above the ordinary 
level of such things, and many men have written as 
good verses when they were boys, who never came 
within measurable distance of being poets. One 
stanza, however, deserves to be quoted, because the 
first two lines are the earliest example of a figure the 
writer often afterwards employed : — 

"Yes, there are stories registered on high, 
Yes, there are stains time's fingers cannot blot, 



ii.] RUGBY AND OXFORD 11 

Deeds that shall live when they who did them, die ; 
Things that may cease, but never be forgot : 
Yet some there are, their very lives would give 
To be remember 'd thus, and yet they cannot live." 

The last couplet is sadly wooden, and shows that the 
young versifier had not got his stride. Macaulay is 
almost the onty man who has successfully imitated 
without parodying Byron. 

In this same year, 1840, Matthew Arnold won an 
open scholarship at Balliol, and in 1841 he went into 
residence. Oxford was then in the full swing of the 
Tractarian movement. Newman had not yet retired 
to Littlemore, and was still drawing crowded congrega- 
tions at St. Mary's. The fascination of that extraor- 
dinary man attracted minds so utterly dissimilar to 
his own as Mark Pattison's and Anthony Froude's. 
But upon Matthew Arnold he seems to have had no 
effect whatever. Perhaps the influence of Dr. Arnold, 
who regarded Newman as something very like Anti- 
christ, was too strong. In 1841, just before the 
"Whigs went out of office, Lord Melbourne appointed 
Dr. Arnold Regius Professor of History, and in De- 
cember of that year, to a crowded audience, largely 
composed of old Rugbeians, he delivered his inaugural 
lecture. In the following June he died, and his mem- 
ory was consecrated by his early death. Matthew 
Arnold's own temperament, however, though not 
irreligious, was utterly unclerical, and he never con- 
templated, as most undergraduates not in easy cir- 
cumstances at that time did, the possibility of taking 
orders. 

Except for a few venerable landmarks, and the 
examination in the school of Literce Humaniores, there 



12 MATTHEW AKNOLD [chap. 

is little left now of the Oxford which Matthew Arnold 
entered sixty years ago. Before the Commission of 
1850 the University was in form what it had been in 
the middle ages. All power was in the hands of the 
Hebdomadal Board, and the Hebdomadal Board was 
simply the Pleads of Houses. The separate Colleges 
kept strictly to themselves, there were no combined 
lectures, and no unattached students. Every under- 
graduate subscribed the Thirty-Nine Articles, so that 
only members of the Church of England could enter 
the University. 

Such, at least, was the theory, though of course in 
practice religious tests exclude only the conscientious. 
But a society coufined to one ecclesiastical organisation 
gave itself up to the vehemence of ecclesiastical dis- 
putes. Nonconformity was not represented. Rome 
proved a powerful attraction, and young men, as Pat- 
tison puts it, spent the time that should have been 
devoted to study in discussing which was the true 
Church. At Balliol there was perhaps more intellec- 
tual activity than at any other college. The scholar- 
ships and fellowships, as was rare in those days, were 
open. Dr. Jenkyns, the Master, though no great 
scholar himself, was jealous for BallioPs intellectual 
reputation, and had some at least of the qualities 
which in a larger world are. called statesmanship. 
Mr. Jowett, then a young Fellow, was beginning the 
long career which will always be associated with the 
name of Balliol. Of Dr. Arnold's old pupils at Balliol, 
Stanley had become a Fellow of University, and 
Clough a Fellow of Oriel. Among Matthew Arnold's 
contemporaries his closest friends were John Duke 
Coleridge, afterwards Lord Chief-Justice of England, 



ii.] RUGBY AND OXFORD 13 

and John Campbell Shairp, afterwards Principal of the 
United College, St. Andrew's. Shairp's lines about 
Matthew Arnold are too hackneyed for quotation. 
They describe the debonair gaiety with which all his 
friends are familiar, and which he never lost. The 
" home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopu- 
lar names, and impossible loyalties," was dearer to Mr. 
Arnold than Rugby, or even Laleham. For the country 
round Oxford he had a passion, which found full vent 
in " The Scholar Gipsy " and in " Thyrsis." For the 
squabbles about Tract Number Ninety, and " Ideal 
Ward's" Degree, he did not care two straws. Max 
Muller has described in, his Autobiography the amaze- 
ment which he, a young German, fresh from Leipzig 
and Berlin, felt at the spectacle of religious disputes 
having no intelligible connection with religion. Mat- 
thew Arnold's view of them was much the same as 
Max Midler's. 

In the year after his father's death, 1843, Matthew 
Arnold won theNewdigate with a poem on " Cromwell." 
He and Tennyson are exceptions to the rule that prizes 
for poetry do not fall to poets. But "Cromwell" is 
even less remarkable than " Alaric at Rome." Written, 
as all Newdigates must be, in heroic rhyme, it has flow 
and smoothness of numbers without inspiration, or 
even distinction of style. There is one obvious touch 
of Wordsworth, or, as some will have it, of Words- 
worth's wife — 

" Yet all high sounds that mountain children hear 
Flash'd from thy soul upon thine inward ear." 

But Wordsworth had as yet no reason to be proud of 
his pupil. There is more promise of the future in the 



14 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

Kugby poem than in the Oxford one, and more of the 
feeling for nature which was afterwards so conspicuous. 
Matthew Arnold's published Letters unfortunately do 
not date back to his Oxford days, which must have 
been among the fullest and the most enjoyable of his 
full and happy life. We know from Lord Coleridge 
that he belonged to " The Decade," a small debating 
Society, Avhere, as that great lover of argument says, 
they " fought to the stumps of their intellects." Per- 
haps the poet neglected the schools. At any rate, like 
his friend Clough a few years before him, he was placed 
in the second class at the final examination for Classical 
Honours. But this comparative failure was more than 
redeemed, in his case as in Clough's, by a Fellowship at 
Oriel, of which his father had also been a Fellow. He 
was elected in 1845, when an Oriel Fellowship was still 
regarded as the most brilliant crown of an Oxford 
career. Dr. Hawkins, the famous Provost, who brought 
to the government of a college an ability greater than 
has often been employed in the misgovernment of 
kingdoms, would not allow a vacancy to be advertised. 
If people, he said, wanted to know whether there was 
a vacant Fellowship at Oriel, they might come and 
ask. Certainly the College of Whately and Newman, 
of Clough and Church, of Matthew Arnold and his 
father, had good reason to be proud of its sons. But 
it would not have suited Matthew Arnold to become a 
College Don. He was essentially a man of the world, 
hiving society in its widest sense, a scholar by tempera- 
ment and taste, but delighting to mix with all sorts 
and conditions of his fellow-creatures. Although, like 
most Oxford men of his generation, he had no scientific 
bent or training, his interests were too many rather 



II.] RUGBY AND OXFORD 15 

than too few. Narrowness was never among his 
faults. He was rather too apt to think that there was 
no subject upon which an educated man is not compe- 
tent to form an opinion. Perhaps the free life of 
unreformed Oxford, with its lax discipline, its few 
examinations, its ample leisure for social intercourse 
of the best and highest kind, as of others with which 
the biographer of Matthew Arnold has no concern, 
fostered a tendency to diffusiveness, as well as a belief 
that everything was open for discussion. As a critic 
Matthew Arnold was not free from a dogmatism of his 
own. But the chief lesson which he took away from 
Oxford was the Platonic maxim, yStos dve£e'rao-Tos oi 
(3iwT(k, — "life without the spirit of inquiry is not 
worth living." 



CHAPTER III 



EARLY POEMS 



After taking his degree, which would have shocked 
his father, and winning his Fellowship, which would 
have delighted him, Matthew Arnold returned to 
Rugby, and taught classics in the fifth form. Thus 
began his long connection with education, which only 
ceased two years before his death. Dr. Arnold's suc- 
cessor in the headmastership of Rugby was Dr. Tait, 
a less brilliant scholar, but a man of great dignity and 
profound sagacity, whose full powers were not tested 
until he came to direct the Church of England, and to 
represent her in the House of Lords, at a period of 
momentous interest and importance. It is not too 
much to say that no other public school in England 
has been governed within so short a time by three men 
so able, eminent, and influential as Dr. Arnold, Dr. Tait, 
and Dr. Temple. Two of them became Archbishops of 
Canterbury. The third might have eclipsed them 
both if he had not been cut off prematurely in the 
plenitude of his physical and intellectual vigour. It 
is curious that not one of them was a Rugby man. 
Many years afterwards, at a dinner given within the 
walls of Balliol, Mr. Arnold, with characteristic irony 
and urbanity, contrasted Archbishop Tait and himself 
as types of the Balliol man who had succeeded and the 

16 



chap, in.] EARLY POEMS 17 

Balliol man who had failed in life. It is probable that 
these few months at Rugby improved and confirmed 
the accuracy of Matthew Arnold's scholarship, which 
distinguishes his classical poems, and his " Lectures on 
Translating Homer." There is a good deal more to be 
said for gerund-grinding than Carlyle would allow. 

Mr. Arnold, however, was not destined to remain 
long a schoolmaster. He soon became the citizen of a 
larger world than Rugby, and few indeed have been 
better qualified to instruct or to adorn it. In 1847 he 
was made private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, then 
President of the Council in the administration of Lord 
John Russell. Lord Lansdowne was one of those 
statesmen who play a great part in political history 
without filling a large space in the newspapers. 
AVithout striking abilities, and without ambition of 
any kind, he contrived by his personal tact and calm 
wisdom to reconcile the differences of the Whig party, 
to keep more brilliant men than himself out of mis- 
chief, and to lead the House of Lords. He had also 
the pleasant and valuable gift of recognising early 
promise, together with the rare and enviable power 
of bringing young men forward and giving them their 
chance. It was he who brought Macaulay into the 
House of Commons as Member for Calne, and to him 
the country owes it that Matthew Arnold had the 
opportunity of doing for popular education what no 
one else could have done. He was a real, though a 
very moderate, Liberal, and Matthew Arnold's politics 
were substantially those of his patron. 

The earliest of Mr. Arnold's Letters, edited by 
Mr. George Russell, and published by Messrs. Mac- 
millan, is dated the 2nd of January 1848, on his way to 



18 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

Bowood, Lord Lansdowne's house in Wiltshire. It 
was apparently his first visit, for he tells his mother, 
to whom the letter is written, that he does not expect 
to "know a soul there." But Matthew Arnold was 
never shy ; and Lord Lansdowne, as Macaulay testifies, 
was the most gracious of hosts. Of the society of Bo- 
wood, however, we have in the letters no glimpse. On 
this January day in the year of Revolutions the writer 
had come from his old home at Laleham, and he gives an 
enthusiastic description of the country. " Yesterday," 
he says, " I was at Chertsey, the poetic town of our 
childhood, as opposed to the practical, historical 
Staines; it is across the river, reached by no bridges 
and roads, but by the primitive ferry, the meadow 
path, the Abbey river with its wooden bridge, and the 
narrow lane by the old wall; and, Itself the stillest of 
country towns backed by St. Ann's, leads nowhere but 
to the heaths and pines of Surrey. How unlike the 
journey to Staines, and the great road through the 
flat, drained Middlesex plain, with its single standing 
pollarded elms." No English poet, not even Words- 
worth, had a more passionate love of the country than 
Matthew Arnold. But, unlike Wordsworth, he was an 
omnivorous reader, as familiar with German and 
French as with Latin and Greek. Writing again to 
his mother on the Tth of May in this same year 1848, 
he expresses a rather crude and hasty verdict on 
Heine, to whom he afterwards did more justice both 
in prose and verse. "I have just finished," he tells 
Mrs. Arnold, "a German book I brought with me here, 
a mixture of poems and travelling journal by Heinrich 
Heine, the most famous of the young German literary 
set. He has a good deal of power, though more trick ; 



hi.] EARLY POEMS 19 

however, lie has thoroughly disgusted me. The 
Byronisni of a German, of a man trying to be gloomy, 
cynical, impassioned, moqueur, etc., all d, la fois, with 
their honest bonhommistic language and total want of 
experience of the kind that Lord Byron, an English 
peer with access everywhere, possessed, is the most 
ridiculous thing in the world." Happily, Matthew 
Arnold travelled soon and far from the state of mind 
in which he could regard the Reisebilder as " the most 
ridiculous thing in the world." The author of Heine's 
Grave knew that to speak of Heine as a man who 
tried to be gloomy was the reverse of the truth. 
Heine's model was not Byron, but Sterne, and it was 
beneath Matthew Arnold to bring the privileges of 
the peerage into literature. But there never was a 
more flagrant example than Byron in contradiction of 
the proverb Noblesse obluje, aud it cannot be denied 
that Dr. Arnold would have highly disapproved of the 
Meisebilder. 

On the 21st of July 1849 there appeared in the 
Examiner the first of Matthew Arnold's sonnets. It 
was published anonymously, and addressed " To the 
Hungarian Nation." On the 29th of July he told his 
mother that it was " not worth much," and from this 
candid opinion I, at least, am not prepared to dissent. 
Such lines as 

" Not in American vulgarity, 
Nor wordy German imbecility," 

would almost have justified a repetition of the proph- 
ecy which Dry den delivered to Swift. And yet, be- 
fore the year was over, Mr. Arnold had brought out a 
volume which ought to have established his place in 



20 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

English poetry, though for some unexplained reason 
it did not. The " Sonnet to the Hungarian Nation " 
was not republished in the lifetime of the author. It 
may be found in Alaric at Rome and Other Poems, 
edited by Mr. Richard Garnett in 1896. 

The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems, by "A.," 
appeared in the author's twenty-seventh year. Feu- 
volumes of equal merit have made so small an impres- 
sion upon the public. Although every poem in it, 
except one, " The Hayswater Boat," was afterwards 
reprinted with Mr. Arnold's sanction, and now forms 
a permanent part of English literature, scarcely any 
notice was taken of it at the time, and it was with- 
drawn from circulation when only a few copies had 
been sold. It is difficult to account for this neglect. 
The age was not altogether a prosaic one. Words- 
worth was still alive, and still Laureate, although it 
was long since he had written anything that wore 
the semblance of inspiration. Tennyson was already 
famous, in spite of envious detraction and ignorant 
misunderstanding. Browning, though not yet popular, 
was ardently admired as the author of " Paracelsus*' 
by a small circle of the best judges. Rogers was 
enjoying in his old age a poetical reputation which. 
though it may have been enhanced by his social 
celebrity, was yet thoroughly deserved. Matthew 
Arnold, unlike them all, was as true a poet as any of 
them, and had none of the obscurity which made 
Browning "caviare to the general." So far as the 
poem which gave its title to the book is concerned, tin- 
cold reception accorded to it was natural enough. 
Rhyme and blank verse have their own high and 
recognised positions. AVe may agree with Milton in 



in.] EARLY POEMS 21 

holding that rh} T me is "no necessary adjunct" of 
"poem or good verse," while yet humbly and rever- 
ently dissenting from his further opinion that it was 
" the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched 
matter and lame metre," which indeed the noble and 
beautiful melody of "Lycidas" and "Comus" and 
"1/ Allegro" and "11 Penseroso" sufficiently refutes. 
But except for a few hexameters, such as some of 
Kingsley's, some of Longfellow's, all Dr. Hawtrey's, 
and a few of ('lough's, Ihere is hardly room in English 
for verse which is neither one nor the other. I say 
"hardly," remembering Tennyson's "Gleam" and 
Browning's "One Word More." But I do not think 
that any poem of Matthew Arnold's, not even "Rugby 
Chapel," could be included in the same category as 
these. The Strayed Reveller opens well with the 
impassioned address of the youth to Circe — 

" Faster, faster, 
Circe, Goddess, 
Let the wild, thronging train, 
The bright procession 
Of eddying forms, 
Sweep through my soul." 

But aline which almost immediately follows — 

"Lean'd tip against the column there," 

is surely cacophonous to the last degree. The idea 
of the poem is as fascinating as it is fantastic. The 
spells of Circe have wrought no hideous transforma- 
tion here. The youth's visions are the visions of the 
gods, and the appearance of Ulysses, the "spare, dark- 
featur'd, quick-eyed stranger," recalls that wonderful 
line, which sums up the spirit of all adventure — 

"TrXetV tni otvoira tt6vtov, err' aWodpdovs avdpwirovs." 



22 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

But poets, from the least to the greatest, have to 
reckon with the necessity of external form. 

The "Fragment of an ' Antigone ' " is a similar 
experiment, and not in my opinion more successful. 
Such lines as 

" August laws doth mightily vindicate," 
or 

"A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse," 

require an abnormal ear to appreciate theii harmony. 
Moreover, this piece suffers by comparison with Mr. 
Browning's stately fragment of an Hippolytns called 
"Artemis Prologises," and with Cardinal Newman's 
verses, beginning " Man is permitted many things." 
They have beauty of form, and arc cast iu national 
moulds, for one is blank verse, and the other is rhyme. 
But these are spots on the sun. The little book, so 
soon suppressed, contained some of Mr. Arnold's best 
work, and should have received, at least from all 
scholars, an enthusiastic welcome. The opening son- 
net, suggested by Goethe's famous "Ohne Hast ohne 
Bast," is not equal to the later ones on Homer, Epio- 
tetus, and Sophocles, which may perhaps be called 
his best. But it raises at once the question where 
Matthew Arnold's sonnets deserve to rank. No one, 
I suppose, would class them with Keats's or with 
Wordsworth's. They might fairly be put on a level 
with Bossetti's, and above Tennyson's, for Tennyson 
did not shine in the very difficult art of sonnet-writ- 
ing. It may l>e considered a proof rather of Mr. 
Arnold's courage than of his discretion that he should 
have written a sonnet on Shakespeare. Shakespeare's 
own sonnets are beacons, and, like other beacons, they 



in.] EARLY POExMS 23 

are warnings. Of fine writing on Shakespeare we 
have enough, and more than enough. 

" Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self -hem our' d, self-secure," 

is but fine writing after all. The sonnet " "Written in 
Emerson's Essays" is thoughtful and interesting. But 
the last line is open to an obvious criticism — 

" Dumb judges, answer, truth or mockery ? " 

What is the use of asking dumb judges to answer ? 
The lines " To an Independent Preacher, who preached 
that we should be in Harmony with Nature," lack the 
urbanity which Mr. Arnold always preached, and usu- 
ally practised. But contact with Dissenters seems to 
have upset his moral equilibrium. The finest of these 
early sonnets is the first of the three addressed " To 
a Republican Friend." The friend was, I presume, 
Clough, to whom he wrote as " Citizen Clough, Oriel 
Lyceum, Oxford," assuring him, as Clough tells us, 
that "the Millennium was not coming this bout." 
Clough's republicanism was skin-deep, and before his 
premature death he might have said, with Southey, 
that he was no more ashamed of having been a repub- 
lican than of having been young. Many Oxford 
Liberals, Stanley included, were enthusiastic demo- 
crats in 1849, when France seemed to be showing the 
way, and no one suspected that the Second Empire 
was at hand. But few, indeed, except John Duke 
Coleridge, retained their early faith to the end of 
their days. Matthew Arnold, however, was from the 
first a moderate Liberal, and a moderate Liberal he 
continued to the last. The excellent qualities of 
judgment and sympathy were his, but of political 



24 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

enthusiasm he was incapable. This beautiful sonnet 
deserves to be quoted at length, not only for its 
intrinsic merits, but also because it is thoroughly 
characteristic of his thoughts and wishes — 

" God knows it, I am with you. If to prize 
Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few, 
But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you, 
Man's fundamental life : if to despise 
The barren optimistic sophistries 
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do 
Teaolus the limit of the just and true — 
And for such doing have no need of eyes : 
If sadness at the long heart-wasting show- 
Wherein earth's gnat ones are disquieted : 
If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow 
The armies of the homeless and unfed : — 
If these are yours, if this is what you are, 
Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share." 

This is not equal to Wordsworth's incomparable 
sonnet on Milton, which it inevitably Buggests, but 
they are very noble lines, and they contain the essence 
of Mr. Arnold's political creed. 

Readers must have been blind, indeed, who could 
not see the beauty of " Mycerinus." The strange, 
weird, tragic story of this Egyptian king is familiar 
to all lovers of Herodotus. In that exquisitely simple 
and pellucid stylo which none of his successors have 
equalled or approached the unconsciously great his- 
torian tells how Mycerinus forsook the evil ways of 
his cruel father, and governed his people with a mild, 
paternal rule. The father lived to a green old 
feared and haled by his subjects. Against the son in 
the prime of life there went out a decree from the 



i".] EARLY POEMS 



25 



oracles of God that after six years he must die. Vainly 
did Mycerinus protest that, shunning bad examples, 
he had loved justice and hated iniquity. The stern 
answer came that he had misread the sentence of fate, 
which had determined that for a century the Egyp- 
tians should be oppressed. The father was wiser' in 
his generation than the child of light. Then Myceri- 
nus felt that the riddle of the painful earth was more 
than he could read ; that to struggle was useless ; and 
that all he could do was to make his six years into 
twelve by devoting every moment to pleasure, by 
turning night into day. But first he summoned the 
people, and told them the whole story. He described 
briefly his own youth — 

" Self-govern'd, at the feet of Law; 
Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings, 
By contemplation of diviner things." 

lb- took them into his confidence. He asked them, 
as if they could tell him, whether the gods were 
altogether careless of men and men's actions. 

" Or is it that some Power, too wise, too strong, 
Even for yourselves to conquer or beguile, 
Whirls earth, and heaven, and men, and gods along, 
Like the broad rushing of the column 'd Nile ? 
And the great powers we serve, themselves may be 
Slaves of a tyrannous Necessity ? " 

No such verse had been written in English since 
Wordsworth's "Laodamia," and the poem abounds in 
single lines of haunting charm, such as — 

"Love, free to range, and regal banquetings," 
" Sweep in the sounding stillness of the night," 



26 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

which has an echo of Theocritus, with perfect couplets, 
as, for instance — 

"And prayers, and gifts, and tears, are fruitless all, 
And the night waxes, and the shadows fall." 

Or, in the concluding portion of the poem, which is 
blank verse — 

" While the deep-burnish'd foliage overhead 
Splinter' d the silver arrows of the moon, 1 ' 

where the Virgilian note will strike every scholar. 
" Stand forth, true poet that you are," should have 
been the discerning critic's invitation to the anony- 
mous author of " Mycerinus." Bat it was not. 

The contents of this little volume varied much in 
merit, as in other respects. "The Sick King in Bok- 
hara" is almost prosaic. Mr. Arnold, who hated 
Macaulay, sneered at the Lays of Ancient Borne, of 
which his father was so fond, and selected for especial 
ridicule the lines from "Horatius" — 

"To every man upon this earth 
Death cometh, soon or late. 1 ' 

There is not much to be said for them, I admit. But 
if a poet is to be judged by his worst things, and not 
by his best, there are lines from "The Sick King in 
Bokhara" which may be set beside Macaulay's — 

" Look, this is but one single place, 
Though it be great : all the earth round, 
If a man bear to have it so, 
Things which might vex him shall be found." 

If this is poetry, what is prose? Although I may be 
rash, I give my opinion for what it is worth, and it 
is that neither the story of this invalid monarch nor 



in.] EARLY POEMS 27 

Mr. Arnold's treatment of it made the poem meet for 
republication, or for anything but repentance. 

"A Modern Sappho," in the style of Moore's IrisJi 
Melodies, is chiefly memorable for the fine couplet — 

"But deeper their voice grows, and nobler their bearing, 
"Whose youth in the fires of anguish hath died." 

"The New Sirens" is an especial favourite with Mr. 
Swinburne, and was republished a quarter of a century 
afterwards at his request. No poet has been more 
generously appreciative of his contemporaries, whether 
older or younger than himself, than Mr. Swinburne ; 
and in this case, at all events, his insight was sure. 
" The New Sirens " is not unlike Mrs. Browning's 
" Wine of Cyprus," but it is less unequal, more mu- 
sical, more chastened and subdued. The poem " To a 
Gipsy Child by the Seashore " contains one most beau- 
tiful quatrain — 

"Ah ! not the nectarous poppy lovers use, 
Not daily labour's dull, Lethcean spring, 
Oblivion in lost angels can infuse 
Of the soil'd glory, and the trailing wing." 

A critic of the Johnsonian school, however, might 
observe that it is the unsoiled glory and the soaring 
wing which the lost angels would remember. Remem- 
brance is of the past, not the present. In its delicate 
loveliness " The Forsaken Merman " ranks high among 
Mr. Arnold's poems. It is a story of a Sea-king, 
married to a mortal maiden, who forsook him and 
her children under the impulse of a Christian convic- 
tion that she must return and pray for her soul. Her 
name was Mr. Arnold's favourite name, Margaret. 



23 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

The Merman saw her through the window as she sat 
in church with her eyes on " the holy book."' But she 
came back to him no more. '"Alone dwell for ever 
the kings of the sea." " Alone the sun rises, and alone 
Spring the great streams," says Mr. Arnold in another 
poem. 

Perhaps the most exquisite, and certainly the most 
characteristic, poem in the volume is " [Resignation." 
One cannot doubt that into these lines of tinselled 
and classic perfection Matthew Arnold put his mind 
and soul. Everything in the bonk was republished, 
except "Tin' Ha ir Boat," which hardly deserved 

exclusion. Bui u Resignation " is part of Mr. Arnold's 
life and character. We cannot think of him without 
it. Attlu- very beginning we read of "the (loth, bound 
Rome-wards," and we remember Alaric. The "mist- 
wreath'd flock" and the '-wet flowered grass" recall 
th" Sicilian poet he loved so well. But Theocritus is 
not the poet described here — 

" Lean'd on his gate, he gazes : tears 
Are in his eyes, and in his ears 
The murmur of a thousand years ; 
Before him lie sees Life unroll, 
A placid and continuous whole ; 
That general Life, which does not cease, 
W: b is not joy, hut peace ; 

That Life, whose dumb wish is not miss'd 
If birth proceed-;, if tin 
The Life of plants, and Btones, and rain ; 
The Life h< ; if nol in vain 

Fate gave, what Chinee shall not control, 
His sad lucidity of .soul." 

It Mr. Arnold was, as he must have been, sometimes 
sad, he never allowed the shadow of his gloom to rest 



in.] EARLY POEMS 29 

upon others. Peace of mind and lucidity of soul he 
acquired, if he did not always possess them. Prob- 
ably they were congenital, like the healthier and 
sounder parts of his father's Puritanism. A fastidious 
critic, Tennyson for instance, might have objected to 
the juxtaposition of " gate " and " gazes," or of " wish " 
and "miss'd." But apart from small blemishes of this 
kind, the lines are as symmetrical in form as they 
are full of calm and yet intense feeling. They sum 
up Mr. Arnold's imaginative philosophy. They are 
the man. Equal to them, perhaps in expression beyond 
them, are those which almost immediately follow: — 

41 Deeply the Poet feels ; but he 
Breathes, when he will, immortal air, 
Where Orpheus and where Homer are. 
In the day's life, whose iron round 
BemB us all in, he is not bound. 
He escapes thence, but we abide. 
Not deep the Poet sees, but wide." 

Shakespeare was not the only poet who saw deep as 
well as wide. It would be hard to fathom the thought 
of Wordsworth in his sublimest moments, and Orpheus 
was a mystic, if Homer was not. Sophocles was 
perhaps in Mr. Arnold's mind — "singer of sweet 
Colonos, and its child.'' He never surpassed the best 
things in " Resignation," and for life's fitful fever the 
English language, rich as it is in all manner of refresh- 
ing influences, contains no more healing balm. 



CHAPTER IV 



WORK AXD POETRY 



On* the 14th of April 1851, Matthew Arnold was 
appointed by Lord Lansdowne to an Inspectorship of 
Schools, which he retained for five-and-thirty years. 
His friend, Mr. Ralph Lingen, afterwards Lord Lingen, 
who had been his tutor at Oxford, was influential 
in procuring him this post, though it came to him 
naturally enough, being in the gift of his official chief. 
Mr. Lingen was Secretary to the Education Depart- 
ment, then in its infancy, and he wished to attract 
young men of promise from the Universities. He 
never made a better choice than Matthew Arnold. 
It is no disparagement of the many able men who 
have been Inspectors of Schools to say that not one 
of them excelled Mr. Arnold in fitness for the post. 
-He was very fond of children, he knew by instinct 
how to deal with them, and at the other end of the 
scale he had a real scientific knowledge of what educa- 
tion in its highest sense ought to l>e. With lofty ideas 
of that kind, however, he had for some years little 
enough to do. Compulsory education was still the 
dream of advanced theorists. The parliamentary 
grants were only five }-ears old, and a school which 
chose, like Archdeacon Denison's, to dispense with a 
grant, could dispense with inspection too. But the 

30 



CHAP. IT.] 



WORK AND POETRY 



31 



bribe was pretty high, few national schools could 
afford to despise it, and Mr. Arnold had plenty to do. 
Throughout his life, indeed, he worked hard for a 
moderate salary, never complaining, always promoting 
the happiness of others, and throwing into his daily 
duties every power of his mind. In one of his early 
letters to his sister, Mrs. Forster, Mr. Arnold naively 
observes that he is much more worldly than the rest 
of his family. He was fond of society, and a delightful 
member of it. Worldly in any other sense he was not. 
Few men have had less ambition, or a stronger sense 
of duty. On the 10th of June, in this same year, he 
married the lady who for the rest of his life was the chief 
source of his happiness. Her name was Frances Lucy 
Wightman, and her father was an excellent Judge of a 
good old school, much respected in Court, little known 
outside. Mr. Arnold, though neither a lawyer nor inter- 
ested in law, accompanied Mr. Justice Wightman on 
circuit for many Assizes as Marshal. Characteristic- 
ally avoiding the criminal side, he liked to watch his 
father-in-law try causes. "He does it so admirably," 
he tells his wife. " It " is said to be a lost art. 

One of his first letters to Mrs. Arnold, dated from 
the Oldham Road Lancastrian School at Manchester, 
on the 15th of October 1851, shows the spirit with 
which he entered upon his regular functions. " I think 
I shall get interested in the schools after a little time," 
he writes ; "their effects on the children are so immense, 
and their future effects in civilising the next genera- 
tion of the lower classes, who, as things are going, will 
have most of the political power of the country in their 
hands, may be so important." But meanwhile he gave 
the public another volume of poems. 



32 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

In October 1852 appeared Empedocles on Etna, and 
Other Poe at*, by " A." Although this volume, with its 
predecessor, contains most of Mr. Arnold's best verse, 
ami although lie never afterwards wrote anything 
except "Thyrsis" and "Westminster Abbey," which 
added much to his poetical reputation, the one book 
fell as flat as the other, and was withdrawn before fifty 
copies had been sold. A greater reproach to the criti- 
cism of the early Victorian age i' ild hardly be. 
Tennyson had succeeded Wo rthasPoel Laureate, 
but he had not yet become really popular, and Brown- 
ing was still only the idol of a clique. The one man 
in England lit to be compared with either Browning 
or Tennyson gave the public of his and the public 
neither praised uor ' i. They took no notice at 
all. The earliest of the 1 ami interesting 
poems in point of time is the •• Memorial Verses" on 
the death of Wordsworth, which happened in April 
1850. The opening lines are familiar — 

" Goethe in Weim i, ami Gree 

Long sine Byron's ise. 

But one such death remain'd to come. 
The last poetic verse Is dumb. 
What shall be said o'er Wordsworth's tomb?" 

To Tennyson, Matthew Arnold was always unjust, 

and never appreciated his greatness. Whether " tomb" 
rhymes with "dumb" I shall nol assume the province 
of determining. Mr. Arnold had not a faultless ear. 

Indeed, some of his unrhymed lyrics lead one to ask 
whether he had any ear at all. and for richness of 

melody he cannot be mentioned with Mr. Swinburne. 

Goethe and "Wordsworth can hardly be compared, 



iv.] WORK AND POETRY 33 

except for purposes of contrast. Wordsworth, as is 
well known, objected to Goethe's poetry that it was 
" not inevitable enough," thereby introducing a word 
which has since been done to death in the service of 
the lower criticism. But Mr. Arnold's classic eulogy 
of Goethe is fine in itself, being indeed little more than 
a paraphrase of the great Viigilian hexameters — 

" Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum, 
Subjecit pedibus, Btrepitumque Acherontis Averni." 

When we read — 

" Time may restore us in his course 
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force; 
But where will Europe's latter hour 
Again find Wordsworth's healing power? " 

we are tempted to ask why another Wordsworth is 
less possible, if there can be degrees of possibility, 
than another Goethe? And indeed much of the heal- 
ing power may be found in the best verse of Mr. 
Arnold himself. 

EmpedocHes on Etna was a speeial favourite with 
Robert Browning, at whose request it reappeared in 
18G7. It was then new as a whole to the general 
public, for in 1862 its author almost immediately with- 
drew it, and only fragments of it were reprinted in 
1855. That Browning should admire it was not 
wonderful, for both the subject and the treatment are 
suggestive of "Paracelsus," though " Paracelsus " is to 
my thinking a far finer poem. Empedocles was a 
Sicilian.Greek of the fifth century before Christ, whose 
philosophical remains, such as they are, show him to 
have been a dreamy, mystical sceptic. The legend 



34 MATTHEW ARNOLD [.hap. 

that in despair of attaining truth, he flung himself 
into the crater of Etna, is a mere tradition without 
historic value. The blank verse of Empedocles is not 
equal to Mr. Arnold's best. Such a Line as — 

" I hear, Gorgias, their chief, speaks nobly of him," 

can neither be defended nor scanned. On the other 

hand — 

" The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay," 

is a masterpiece of its kind. The onrhymed lyrics are, 

to speak plainly, both here and throughout this volume, 

detestable — 

" fireat qualities are trodden down, 

And littleneae united 

Is become invincible." 

This is not poetry. It is Bcarcely even prose. It is 
something for which literature has no name. Tin- 
song of Empedoclea to his harp, though Ear below 
•• Rabbi Ben Ezra," contains some striking verses, as, 
for instance — 

" We WOUld have Inward peaoe, 
Y> t will DOl look within : 
We would have misery cease, 
Vi t will not oeaee from sin," 

where the curiously Christian tone of Greek moral 
philosophy is well brought out But the best parts of 
the drama, if drama it is to be called, are ti. : 

Callicles. There U one passage clearly written under 
the influence of < rray, with whom Mr. Arnold has & 
times, not perhaps to much purpose, been compared — 

" And the Eagle, at t ho beck 
Of the appeasing gracious harmony, 



IV .] WORK AND POETRY 35 

Droops all bis sheeny, brown, deep-feather'd neck, 

Nestling nearer to Jove's feet : 

While o'er his sovereign eye 

The curtains of the blue films slowly meet." 

One instinctively recalls the beautiful couplet in the 
" Progress of Poesy " — 

" Quenched in dark clouds of slumber lie 
The terrors of his beak, and lightnings of his eye." 

The best consecutive passage of blank verse in the 
poem is undoubtedly the following — 

" And yet what days were those, Parmenides 1 
When we were young, when we could number friends 
In all the Italian cities like ourselves, 
When with elated hearts vre join'd your train, 
Ye Sun-born virgins ! on the road of Truth. 
Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought 
Nor outward things were clos'd and dead to us, 
But we received the shock of mighty thoughts 
On simple minds with a pure natural joy, 
And if the sacred load oppreas'd our brain, 
We had the power to feel the pressure eas'd, 
The brow unbound, the thought How free again, 
In the delightful commerce of the world." 

This is truly Wordsworthian, though Wordsworth 
would hardly have ended two lines out of three with 
the same substantive. But the song of Callicles at 
the end is the gem of the piece. The stanzas are 
familiar — 

" Not here, O Apollo ! 
Are haunts meet for thee. 
But, where Helicon breaks down 
In cliff to the sea." 



36 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

Here the third line halts badly. This, however, is 
almost perfect — 

" 'Tis Apollo comes leading 
His choir, The Nine. 
— The Leader is fairest, 
But all are divine." 

These, too, are lovely, though perhaps the word 
"hotness" is exceptionable — 

" First hymn they the Father 
Of all things : and then 
The rest of Immortals, 
The action of men. 

The Day in its hotness, 
The strife with the palm ; 
The Night in its silence, 
The Stars in their calm.*' 

The question why the second of these two stanzas is 
inferior to the first lies at the root of poetry, and 
involves the true value of poetic style. 

The other long poem in this volume, " Tristram and 
Iseult," contains some of Mr. Arnold's best lyrics, 
especially the noble stanza beginning — 

" Raise the light, my page, that I may see her — 
Thou art come at last then, haughty Queen ! 
Long I've waited, long I've fought my fever: 
Late thou comest, cruel thou hast been." 

And the haunting couplet — 

" What voices are these on the clear night air ? 
What lights in the court ? what steps on the stair ? " 

The story of Tristram and the two Iseults — the Iseult 
he loved and the Iseult he married — has been also 



iv.] WORK AND POETRY 37 

versified by Mr. Swinburne, who treats it with less 
restraint. In Mr. Arnold's hands it is not so much 
interesting or complete in itself as the opportunity for 
stringing together some beauties of melody and niceties 
of phrase. Such lines as — 

" Above the din her voice is in my ears — 
I see her form glide through the crossing spears," 

can never be forgotten. 

Memorable also is the blank verse — 

" She seems one dying in a mask of youth." 

But it may be safely said of this poem that no one has 
ever read it, or ever will read it for the story, which 
indeed is rather suggested than told. It is a curious 
fact that in the first edition of " Tristram and Iseult " 
the place of King Marc's court was made a dactyl. It 

runs — 

" Where the prince whom she must wed 
Keeps his court in Tyntagel." 

It is, of course, Tyntagel, and in later editions the 
second line became — 

" Dwells on proud Tyntagel's hill." 

In every other line where the name occurs a similar 
change was made. 

Among the miscellaneous poems published with 
" Empedocles," " On the Rhine " is chiefly remarkable 
for the pretty lines — 

"Eyes too expressive to be blue, 
Too lovely to be grey." 

But "Parting " belongs to a much higher class. It 
is passionate, as Mr. Arnold's poetry so seldom is, and 



38 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

it is wholly beautiful, with a rush and swing unusual 
in the apostle of philosophic calm, who desired, like 
the poor " Independent Preacher," to be at one with 
nature — 

" But on the stairs what voice is this I hear, 
Buoyant as morning, and as morning clear? 
Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn 
Lent it the music of its trees a1 dawn ? 
Or was it from some sun-fieck'd mountain-brook 
That the sweet voice its upland clearness took ? " 

This is exquisite melody, and the antistrophe, 
beginning — 

" But who is this, by the half-open'd door ? " 

is quite as good. The poem belongs to a collection 
afterwards called " Switzerland/ 1 of whom a lady called 
Marguerite is the subject. She can hardly have 
been a creature of the imagination, but there is no 
trace of her identity. Another of the series, called 
"Absence," is familiar for the pathetic verses — 

" But each day brings its petty dust 
Our soon-chok'd souls to till, 
And we forget because we must 
And not because we will." 

The lines especially addressed to Marguerite end 
with five words — 

" The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea," 

which can hardly be surpassed for curious felicity in 
the English, if in any language. "Self-Dependence" 
is a characteristic exhortation to seek refuge from 
human troubles in the example of nature. We are 
invited to contemplate the stars and the sea — 



iv.] WORK AND POETRY 39 

" Unaff righted by the silence round them, 
Undistracted by the sights they see, 
These demand not that the things without them 
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy." 

The verses are pretty. But, as Gibbon said of 
Sulpicius' letter to Cicero, such consolations never 
dried a single tear. " The Buried Life " is so perfect, 
so finished, and so self-contained, that it would only 
be spoiled by quotation. It is, in fact, a variation of 
the old theme so finely expressed by Seneca — 

" Illi mors gravis incubat 
Qui, notus nimis omnibus, 
Ignotus moritur sibi." 



*e 



" A Farewell,'' on the other hand, which belongs to 
the Marguerite series, is much less equal, but two of 
its stanzas are conspicuously excellent — 

"And though we wear out life, alas ! 
Distracted as a homeless wind, 
In beating where we must not pass, 
In seeking what we shall not find ; 

" Yet we shall one day gain, life past, 
Clear prospect o'er our being's whole ; 
Shall see ourselves, and learn at last 
Our true affinities of soul." 

The " Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann " 
are as much about Goethe as about Senancour ; and 
Goethe, though the prophet of Matthew Arnold as 
well as of Carlyle, belonged to the eighteenth century 
rather than the nineteenth. The unrhymed lyric 
called " Consolation " is, I confess, beyond me — 

" And countless beings 
Pass countless moods," 



40 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

may be poetry, but it is poetry which I cannot dis- 
tinguish from prose; and when "two young, fair 
lovers " cry, " Destiny prolong the present ! Time ! 
stand still here ! " I can only think of the immortal 
prayer — 

" Ye gods, annihilate both space and time 
And make two lovers happy." 

It is strange indeed to turn from these craggy and 
spasmodic utterances to the lovely "Lines written in 
Kensington Gardens " — 

"Calm Si ml of all things ! make it mine 
To feel, amid the city's jar, 
That there abides a peace of thine, 
Man did not make, and cannot mar." 

Not Lucan, not Virgil, only Wordsworth, has more 
beautifully expressed the spirit of Pantheism. 

"The Youth of Nature " and " The Youth of Man" 
are again neither one thing nor the other. " The Youth 
of Nature" is not otherwise remarkable than as it ex- 
aggerates the Conservatism oi Wordsworth, who was 
very much of a Radical in his early days, as the 
•■ Prelude," not published in his lifetime, shows. 
" The Youth of Man " contains the line — 

"Perfumes the evening air," 

which those may scan who have the power, and those 
may like who scan. Written as prose, "And they 
remember with piercing untold anguish the proud boast- 
ing of their youth," is well enough. But metrically 
arranged, it belongs to no metre under Heaven. "And 
the mists of delusion, and the scales of habit, fall away 
from their eyes," is irreproachable prose, but impossible 



iv.] WORK AND POETRY 41 

poetry. " Morality," which follows, is a most refresh- 
ing contrast, and begins at once with a fine stanza — 

" We cannot kindle when we will 
The fire that in the heart resides ; 
The spirit bloweth and is still, 
In mystery our soul abides : 

But tasks in hours of insight will'd 
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd." 

This manly and dignfied tone, so characteristic of 
Matthew Arnold, is the source of much of his influ- 
ence. " Progress," an eloquent expression of his belief 
in purely spiritual religion, apart from all creeds and 
dogmas, was much altered in later editions. Some of 
the changes are certainly improvements. One, I 
think, can hardly be so considered. In the first 
edition we read — 

" Quench then the altar fires of your old Gods ! 
Quench not the fire within ! " 

This became — 

" Leave then the Cross as ye have left carved gods, 
But guard the fire within ! " 

Here the antithesis disappears, and so the expres- 
sion becomes weaker. The tribute to all religions, 
( Miristian and other, is a very fine one — 

" Which lias not taught weak wills how much they can, 
Which has not fall'n on the dry heart like rain ? 
Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, 
1 Thou must be born again ' ? " 

The volume ended with an unrhymed piece called 
" The Future," beginning with the line — 

"A wanderer is man from his birth," 



42 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

which to my ear has two superfluous syllables, and 
ending with the really beautiful verse — 

'• Murmurs and scents of the infinite Sea." 

But it is not by these metrical or unmetrical experi- 
ments that Matthew Arnold li\ 

Empedodes on Etna, and Other Poems, by "A.," 
was withdrawn immediately after publication. It 
was soon, however, followed, in 1853, by a new 
volume of poems, with the author's name on the title- 
page, and containing many pieces already published, 
besides nine which were new. " Empedodes " itself 
did not reappear, for reasons stated in the Preface. 
This essay expresses for the first time Mr. Arnold's 
conception of poetry, and must be regarded as an 
epoch in his life. AJEter declaring thai he had not 
withdrawn u Empedocles" because the subject was too 
remote from the present time, for that he held to be 
an invalid objection, he thus proceeds: — 

"What then are the situations, from the representa- 
tion of which, though accurate, no poetical enjoyment 
can be derived '.' They are those in which the Buffering 

finds no vent in action; in which a continuous state 
of mental distress is prolonged, unrelieved by incident, 
hope, or resistance ; in which there is everything to be 
endured, nothing to be done. In such situations 
there is inevitably something morbid, in the description 
of them something monotonous. When they occur 
in actual life, they are painful, not tragic; the repre- 
sentation of them in poetry is painful a) 

"To this class of situations, poetically faulty as it 
appears to me, that of Empedocles, as I have en- 
deavoured to represent him, belongs; and I have 



iv.] WORK AND TOETRY 43 

therefore excluded the Poem from the present collec- 
tion." 

This important Preface was Mr. Arnold's earliest 
publication in prose. It is written in his best and 
purest style, free from the mannerisms and affectations 
which did so much in later days to spoil the enjoy- 
ment of his readers. But unless Mr. Arnold intended 
to suggest that Empedocles fell into the crater by 
accident, which is hardly conceivable, the theory does 
not quite fit the facts. Suicide is as much action as 
murder, and is as capable of dramatic treatment. The 
thinness of the boundary between the sublime and 
something quite different is a topic more relevant to 
voluntary cremation, following a lengthy philosophic 
song upon a harp. When ^Ir. Arnold goes on to ask 
and to answer the question what are the eternal objects 
of poetry, he is at his best : — 

" The Poet, then, has in the first place to select an 
excellent action; and what actions are the most excel- 
lent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal 
to the great primary human affections: to those elemen- 
tary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, 
and which are independent of time." 

That is full of instruction, for ever memorable, and 
profoundly true. If Mr. Browning had borne it in 
mind, all his poetry would be, as his best poetry is, a 
permanent addition to the imaginative literature of 
the world. In these pages, thoroughly characteristic of 
the writer, appears one phrase which became familiar 
within a few years to all Mr. Arnold's readers. The 
Greeks, he says, are " the unapproached masters of the 
grand style." Professor Saintsbury complains that he 
never defined what he meant by the grand style. But 



44 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

was it necessary ? The words are clear enough, and 
certainly intelligible to all classical scholars. The 
Greeks, says Mr. Arnold, kept style in the right 
degree of prominence. They suited, as Hamlet puts 
it, the word to the action, the action to the word. 1 
am not, however, sure that he exhausts the matter 
when he adds that their range of subjects was so lim- 
ited, because so few subjects are excellent Another 
reason was that a story for dramatic representation 
before the Athenian people must be one which the 
Athenian people knew. They would have resented as 
a dangerous innovation a mere fancy of the dramatist' 
Bui it must not be too recent, and touch too tender 
a place, as Phrynichus discovered to bis cost when he 
was fined for his tragedy on the taking of Miletus. 
Most interesting is the passage in which Mr. Arnold 
traces the influence upon modern English poetry of 
Shakespeare's inexhaustible eloquence. This, he thinks, 
encouraged those who came after Shakespeare, and 
regarded him as the greatest of all models, to think 
too much of expression and too little of composition. 
As the chief example of this error he takes Bleats, 
and especially *• Isabella." He does not depreciate 
Keats, or even •• Isabella." On the contrary, he says 
that "this one short poem contains, perhaps, a greater 
number of happy single expressions which one could 
quote than all the extant tragedies of Sophocles." 
which seems to me a preposterous overstatement. Hut 
he accuses him of subordinating the essential to the 
accidental. That is too large a conclusion to deduce 
from a single poem. It would not be borne out by 
the Sonnets, by the odes, or by Hyperion, As for 
Shakespeare himself, it is mere idolatry to pretend 



iv.] WORK AND POETRY 46 

that all he wrote was equally good. There is much 
bombast in his early work, and over-expression was 
always his besetting sin. It seems a fault in him, 
because he was so great. But his inferior contem- 
poraries had it in a much greater degree. It was the 
vice of the age rather than of the man. He had at 
his best "the severe and scrupulous self-restraint of 
the ancients," which Mr. Arnold denies him. But he 
had it not always, as they had, and it is true, there- 
fore, that he is a " less safe model." " I know not 
how it is," says Mr. Arnold, with insight and felicity 
— "I know not how it is, but their commerce with the 
ancients appears to me to produce, in those who con- 
stantly practise it, a steadying and composing effect 
upon their judgment, not of literary Avorks only, but 
of men and events in general. They are like persons 
who have had a very weighty and impressive experi- 
ence : they are more truly than others under the empire 
of facts, and more independent of the language current 
among those with whom they live." That is admirably 
said, and it is the last word. 

One is rather surprised to find the author of this 
luminous Essay, in a letter to his sister, dated the 
14th of April 1853, comparing ViUette unfavourably 
with My Novel. For though Bulwer was a brilliant 
novelist, and is now, perhaps, too much neglected, 
there is more genius in the pages of ViUette than in all 
the books he ever wrote. But the letter contains also 
an announcement of much interest. " I am occupied," 
he says, " with a thing that gives me more pleasure 
than anything I have ever done yet, which is a good 
sign ; but whether I shall not ultimately spoil it by 
being obliged to strike it oif in fragments instead of 



46 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

at one heat I cannot quite say." He certainly did not 
spoil it. For the thing was "Sohrab and Rustum," 
which all admirers of Matthew Arnold would put in 
the front rank of his poems. It appeared for the 
first time in 1853 ; and though Clough " remained in 
suspense whether he liked it or not," no work of its 
author's has more genuine beauty. Lord John Russell, 
who, in his dry fashion, was a sound judge of good 
literature, had already pronounced Mr. Arnold to be 
" the one rising young poet of the present day," hut 
his fame really began with the publication of this his 
third volume. "Sohrab and Rustum" is a story of 
Central Asia, or, as we used to say, Asia .Minor, told 
in blank verse, and in the Homeric vein. It is called 
"An Episode," and begins in character with the word 
'• And." Far more truly Homeric than ('lough's jolt- 
ing hexameters, it is as good a specimen of Homer's 
manner as can be found in English. Rustum is a 
barbarian, though not an undignified barbarian. But 
the gentle and sympathetic character of Sohrab is one 
of the best and most delicate that Matthew Arnold • 
drew. That he falls by the hand of his unconscious 
father is the simple tragedy of the piece. Very noble 
is his reply to the still sceptical Rustum — 

" Truth sits upon the lips "f dying men. 
And Falsehood, while I liv'd. was far from mine." 

And when Rustum, at last convinced that he has slain 
his son, prays that the Oxus may drown him, Sohrab 
replies, in the exquisite lines — 

"'Desire not that, my father; thou must live. 
For some arc born to do great deeds, and live, 
As some are born to be obscur'd, and die. 



iv.] WORK AND POETRY 47 

Do thou the deeds I die too young to do, 
Aud reap a second glory in thine age.' " 

" The Church of Brou " is chiefly valuable for its 
beautiful conclusion in heroic verse, beginning — 

" So rest, for ever rest, O Princely Pair ! 
In your high Church, 'mid the still mountain air." 

The church, however, is not in the mountains, but in 
the treeless, waterless Burgundian plains. The story 
is not interesting, nor otherwise well told. The lovely 
stanzas called " Requiescat " (" Strew on her roses, 
roses ") is perhaps as familiar as anything that Matthew 
Arnold wrote. This perfect little lyric is worthily 
rendered into Greek Elegiacs in " Arundines Cami." 
" The Scholar Gipsy," though it specially appeals 
through its topography and atmosphere to Oxford 
men, is dear also to all lovers of poetry. The quaint 
and fantastic tale, first told by Glanvil, of the young 
Oxford student who was forced by poverty to leave 
Oxford and herd with the gipsies, is told again by a 
lover of the district, the most beautiful in the English 
midlands. The objection that the poem is too topo- 
graphical seems to me irrelevant. No one quarrels 
with Burns for describing Ayrshire, and the scenery 
of "The Scholar Gipsy" is as familiar as their own 
homes to thousands of educated Englishmen. The 
poem is not one from which detached passages can 
easily be quoted. 

" Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair," 

is very close to Shelley. 

" Still nursing the unconquerable hope, 
Still clutching the inviolable shade, 



48 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

With a free onward impulse brushing through, 
By night, the silver'd branches of the glad 

are lines which, for a sort of magical charm, have 
seldom been surpassed. Fine as they are themselves, 
the last two stanzas of "The Scholar Gipsy " are a 

little out of place. 

•• The young light-hearted M isten of the wan 

is a line one would not willingly lose. But the 
elaborate simile of the "grave Tynan trader" and 
the "merry Grecian coaster" is a less fitting end 
than the melancholy contrast between the scholar's 
blissful simplicity and OUT mental strife. The stanzas 
in •• Memory of the late Edward Quillinan, Esq.," a 
forgotten poet, remembered, if at all, as Wordsworth's 
Bon-in-law, and the translator of Camoens, are rather a 
copy of V( ban a poem. 

In L855 appeared Poems by Matthew Arnold, second 
sen Of these, two only. "Balder Dead" and 

"Separation," were new. By this time, though his 
popularity was not wide, his reputation was assured. 
Reviewers had begun to treat him with respect, 
though there was one curiou ption. Writing on 

the 3rd of August is:. I to Mr. Wyndham Blade, he 
adds this postscript : "My love to J. D. «'.. and tell 
him that the limited circulation of the Christian 
//, ,,-,, ,,', • i ,.-. r, makes the unquestionable viciousness of 

his article of little importance. I am sure he will be 

gratified to think that it is bo." Alter Mr. Arnold's 
death, Lord Coleridge, in obvious allusion to this 
incident, said that the article in the Christian Re- 
membrancer, of which he afterwards bitterly repented, 



iv.] WORK AND POETRY 49 

did not make the slightest difference in the warmth of 
a lifelong friendship. Mr. Arnold was, indeed, as 
nearly incapable of resentment as a human creature 
can be. lie was endowed with one of those perfect 
tempers which are of more value that many fortunes. 
"Balder Dead" is, like "Sohrab and Rustum," 
Homeric in tone, although the subject is taken from 
the Norse mythology. It has not the human interest 
of the earlier poem. Balder, though he died, was a 
god, and the whole machinery is supernatural. A 
Frenchman would have said that Mr. Arnold had 
accomplished a tour de force, and obtained a succes 
d'estime. Nevertheless, "Balder Bead" is full of 
beauty, the verse is musical as well as stately, and 
the mourning of nature for " Balder," believed to be 
invulnerable, but slain by a stratagem, is admirably 
described. Some passages in it are purely Greek, as, 
for instance, this speech of Balder — 

" Hermod the nimble, gild mo not my death ! 
Better to live a serf, a captured man. 
Who scatters rushes in a master's hall, 
Than be a crown'd king here, and rule the dead." 
" iv irafftv vtKveaai KaTa.<pOiy.ivoiai.v avcujativ. 

While the line about " the northern Bear " — 
" And is alone not dipt in Ocean's stream," 
is exactly the beautiful — 

" 0^ 5* &fifj.op6s iffTi XoerpCiv wiceavoio." 

" Balder Dead " must always be a poem for the few. 
But it will have readers who enjoy it intensely, even 
though they feel that it lacks the peculiar fascination 



50 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. iv. 

of " Sohrab and Rustum." " Separation," afterwards 
included in " Faded Leaves," has a tenderness and a 
depth of feeling quite foreign to academic exercises 
like "Balder Dead." It comes, like the songs of 
Burns, straight from the heart, and the last stanza, 
though not faultless in form, is indescribably pa- 
thetic : — 

"Then, when we meet, and thy look strays toward me, 
Scanning my face and the changes wrought there : 
TJ7/o, let me say, is this Stranger regards me, 
With (he grey f>je$, and the lovely tirmcn hair?'''' 

The effect of the word "Stranger" could only have 
been produced by the art which conceals itself, and 
appears as simplicity. 

On the 17th of February 18/56, Mr. Arnold wrote to 
his sister that he had been elected at the Athenaeum, 
and looked forward with ••rapture" to the use of the 
library. One of the first books he read in it seems to 
have been the new volume of Buskin's Modem Painters, 
upon which he passed, on the 31st of March, this 
singular judgment: "Full of excellent apercus, as 
usual, but the man and character too febrile, irritable, 
and weak to allow r him to possess the ordo concate- 
nut imiiic veri." How he would have laughed at this 
pedantry if it had come from a Positivist. 



CHAPTER V 



THE OXFORD CHAIR 



Ox the 5th of May 1857, Mr. Arnold was elected by- 
Convocation to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. 
His unsuccessful competitor was the Reverend John 
Ernest Bode, author of Ballads from Herodotus, and a 
thoroughly orthodox divine. It is a curious fact, illus- 
trating the difference between ancient and modern 
Oxford, that all Mr. Arnold's predecessors in the chair 
were clergymen. All his successors have been lay- 
men. The Professorship was founded in 1808. The 
emoluments were trifling, not more than a hundred 
pounds a year. On the other hand, the duties were 
not heavy, while the statutory obligation to lecture in 
Latin, to which Milman and Keble were subject, had 
been removed. His inaugural lecture was, however, 
severely classical in tone. Its subject was " The Mod- 
ern Element in Literature," and in it Mr. Arnold 
dwelt upon the close intellectual sympathy between 
Greece in the days of Pericles and the England of his 
own day. Both ages, he said, demanded intellectual 
deliverance, and obtained it from literature, especially 
from poetry. Thus, comparing the Periclean with the 
Elizabethan age, he showed how much more modern a 
historian was Thucydides than Raleigh. But the 
writers most akin to our own were, he contended, the 
Greek dramatic poets, especially Sophocles and Aristo- 

51 



62 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chat. 

})hanes. Latin poetry, being essentially imitative, did 
not interpret the timi I rreek poetry did. This lec- 
ture was not published till February 1869, when it 
appeared in MdcmiU nine. It was followed 

by others on the same subject, which have never I 
published at all. Although Mr. Arnold retained his 
Professorship for ten years, he disliked, as is well 
known, the title of 1 >or. It classed him, as he 

plaintively remarked, with Professor Pepper <>f the 
. technic, Professor And . " The Wizard <>f the 
North,'' and other great men with whom he could not 
aspire to rank, lie never a I' I in 0x« 

1! wished I • red a man of letters and 

of the world, provided with an honourable and advan- 
tageous platform from which to expound Ins ideas. 

The real Lnauguj Mr. Arnold's Prof< Bsorship 

w;i^ his tr. "Merope," which appeared in 

1858 with an elal and justificatory Preface. In 

this Mr. Arnold describ L as the stronghold of 

the I,.;. chool, and ed the plea for classical 

principles which forward in the [ntroduc- 

to his I IP ns. The story of Mei 

the widowed queen of Messenia, whose son ^Epytus 
avenges upon Polyphontes tin- murd< hontes, 

his father, was well known to antiquity. Arisl 
cites as specially dramatic the >i'<]\<- wh< re Mferope 18 
on the point of killing JSpytus, not recognising him 
for her son, but believing him to be her Bon'a 'lest royer. 
Euripides made it the Bubject of a play, but only a few 
menta have come down to us. Nfaffei, Voltaire, and 
Alfieri successively dramatised it, altering it more or 

to suit modem taste. Mr. Arnold adhered more 
strictly to the authority, such as it is, of Hygiuus, but 



v.] THE OXFORD CHAIR 63 

omitted, as too revolting, the marriage of Merope with 
Polyphontes, who slew her husband. He seems to 
have forgotten that this was an incident in the great- 
est of all plays, and that the master of human nature 
had not shrunk from presenting Gertrude as the wife 
of Claudius. This Preface contains an attack upon 
French Alexandrines, which is quite unnecessary, and 
a criticism of Voltaire as a playwright which is a 
little out of place, though the comparison with Racine 
is good. But by far the best part of it is that which 
describes, with admirable brevity and clearness, the 
rise of the Greek drama. No one save Aristotle has 
explained in fewer words, or with more picturesque 
lucidity, the growth of the complete play from the 
chorus and the messenger. The chorus was originally 
part of the audience to whom the narrative was 
addressed, though they were the only pari of the 
audience who ventured to interrupt. "The lyrical 
element," as Mr. Arnold well says, "was a relief and 
solace in the stress and conflict of the action," like 
the comic scenes which, as Coleridge observed, Shake- 
speare interposed after great tragic events. Mr. 
Arnold's ideas were excellent. It was in carrying 
them out that he failed. To criticise "Merope" is 
to dissect a corpse, if/v^dptov c? (Sdo-ra^ov viKpov, would 
be a better motto than ^iXoKaXovpnv /act' cvreAoas, 
which is the actual one. In vain does Mr. Arnold 
make Polyphontes a wise and strong king, endeavour- 
ing by years of virtuous rule to expiate the crime into 
which ambition has betrayed him. He does not excite 
our interest, nor does Merope, nor iEpytus, nor any 
of them. The imitation is very skilful. "Merope" 
is far more strictly Greek in tone and style than 



54 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

" Atalanta in Calydon," which is not really Greek at 
all. But it has not the sweep, the ring, the melody, 
nor the sensuous beauty of that fascinating, though 
irregular drama. It is the form without the spirit, 
the body without the soul. " Merope " purports to be 
a Greek play in English dress. It is really a prize 
poem of Inordinate length. Mr. Arnold himself hoped 
great things from it. " I must read ' .Merope ' to you," 
he says in a Letter to Mrs. Forster of the 26th of duly 
1857. "I think and hope it will have what Buddha 
called the character of Purity, that true sign of the 
Law." But Literature La not Law, and requires some- 
thing more than fixity, something, as Carlyle would 
.say. quite other than fixity. "Merope" had a kind 

of success, and not tin- kind which the author hast 

valued. Dr. Temple, the new Headmaster of Rugby, 
an excellent judge, admired it. So did George Henry 

Lewes, so did Kingsley, ami so, with some reserva- 
tions upon the choice of a subject, did Fronde. It 
even sold well. But the general public never took to 

it. and Eew Competent critics would now, I think, say 
that they '■' rong. There are good lines here and 

there, such as the gnome — 

"F>>r tyrants make man g 1 beyond himself," 

and the thoroughly Greek antithesis — 

"Thy crown condemns thee, while thy tongue absolves," 

and the characteristic couplets — 

"To hear another tumult iii these streets, 
To have another murder in these halls." 

"So rule, that as thy fatlirr thou be loved ; 
So rule, that as thy foe thou be Obey'd." 



v.] THE OXFORD CHAIR 55 

But the unrhymed choruses are harsh almost beyond 
belief, as, for instance — 

• She led the way of death. 
And the plain of Tegea, 
And the grave of Orestes — 
Where, in secret seclusion 
Of his unreveal'd tomb, 
Sleeps Agamemnon's unhappy, 
Matricidal, world-famed, 
Seven-cubit-statured son — 
Sent forth Echemus, the victor, the king." 

Perhaps the best of the choric lines are the following, 
which express one of Mr. Arnold's favourite ideas : — 

"Yea, and not only have we not explored 
That wide and various world, the heart of others, 
But even our own heart, that narrow world 
Bounded in our own breast, we hardly know, 
Of our own actions dimly trace the causes." 

But how heavy and lifeless are these verses compared 
with the simple stanza in ''Parting'' — 

'• Far, far from each other 
Our spirits have grown ; 
And what heart knows another ? 
Ah ! who knows his own ? " 

Mr. Arnold was anxious that "Merope" should be 
shown to Kobert Browning, whose "Fragment of a 
Hippolytus," that is, "Artemis Prologises," he justly 
admired. But Mr. Browning, as we have seen, had 
the good taste to prefer "Empedocles," with which 
" Merope " was republished in 1885. Mr. Arnold 
considered Mrs. Browning as " hopelessly confirmed in 
her aberration from health, nature, beauty, and truth." 



56 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

The judgment was severe, but at this distance of time 
one can hardly say that it was unsound. What Mr. 
Arnold failed to see was that in these forced experi- 
ments he ran no small danger of the same kind himself. 

At the beginning of 1858, near; o years after 

his marriage, Mr. Arnold took a small house in ('In 
Square, and for the first time acquired a settled home. 
Both he and his wife were fortunately fond of travel- 
ling. But his incessant movements as Inspector had 
more than satisfied the taste, and they were glad to 
have a fixed abode. Mr. Arnold, however, still con- 
tinned his otlieial tours, and on the 29th of October 
- he heard .John Bright speak at Birmingham. 
'• lit- is an orator of almost the highest rank — voice 
and mannei perhaps not quite flow enough 

— not that he halts or stammers, but I like to have. 
sometimes more of a rush than he ever gives you. Be 
is a far better sneaker than Gladstone." That a " 
better Bpeaker than Gladstone" Bhould not 1m- an ora- 
tor of the high ok is a Btrange paradox. Other- 
the description is excellent, and the comparative 
merits of the two speakers will always divide opinion. 

( )ur feeli] a a poet not unlike Matthew Arnold, 

though inferior to him — 

"Our £« mc flow 

B Mi after twenty-seven <>r bo." 

When Mr. Arnold became Professor of Poetry, he was 

thirty-four, and his creative work as a poet was almost 

finished. In quality some of his later \ ms are 

exquisite. But the quantity of them is very small. 
Perhaps the critical faculty superseded the poetical 

one. He himself said that the critic should keep out 



v.] THE OXFORD CHAIR 67 

of the region of immediate practice. But his first 
published work in prose was a political pamphlet. It 
appeared in 1859 with the tittle England and the Italian 
Question, and a motto from the Vulgate, Sed nondum 
est finis, — "But the end is not yet." This pamphlet, 
never republished, and now very scarce, is a philo- 
sophical argument for the freedom and independence 
of Italy. It contains some curiously bad prophecies, 
such as that Alsace must always be French, and that 
Prussia could not take the held againsl either Austria 
or France. But the historical argument for [taly is 
Btrong, and well put Mr. Arnold shows that Italy 
was independent of a foreign yoke throughout the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His Liberalism, 
however, was always moderate, being, in fact, W hi,^- 
gery ; and when he comes forward as the champion of 
Italian nationality, he is careful to disclaim all sym- 
pathy with such inferior races as the Hungarians, the 
Irish, and the Poles. In the true Whig spirit, which 
Mr. Arnold may have imbibed from Lord Lansdowne, 
is his eidogy of the English aristocracy, and the gov- 
erning skill they had displayed since the Revolution 
of 1688. 

When Mr. Arnold praised the disinterestedness of 
France, he did not foresee the annexation of Savoy and 
Nice, which followed next year, having really been 
arranged before the war between the Emperor Napo- 
leon and Count Cavour. Victor Emmanuel obtained 
for Italy Lombardy and the central Italian Provinces, 
except Venetia and the Papal States. The inhabitants 
of Nice and Savoy voted b}' overwhelming majorities 
for incorporation with France, but it can hardly be 
said with truth that Louis Napoleon's policy was disin- 



68 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

terested. The opportunity of observing public opinion 
in France on the war was given to Mr. Arnold by his 
appointment, in January 1859, as Foreign Assistant 
Commissioner on Education to visit France, Holland, 
Belgium, Switzerland, and Piedmont. " I cannot tell 
you," he wrote to his sister, Miss Arnold, " how much 
I like the errand, and, above all, to have the French 
district." Holland he did not appreciate, and he pro- 
nounced the Belgians to be the most contemptible peo- 
ple in Europe. But France he thoroughly enjoyed, 
especially Paris, where he was always at home. At 
Paris he " had a long and very interesting conversation 
with Lord Cowley tHe-d,-tPte for about three-quarters of 
an hour the other day. . . . He entirely shared my 
conviction as to the French always beating any num- 
ber of Germans who come into the field against 
them" (Letters, vol. i. p. 9G). Such are the pro- 
phetic powers of exalted diplomatists. In this same 
letter Mr. Arnold refers to that political classic, 
" Mill on Liberty," in language of very chastened 
enthusiasm. " It is," he says, " worth reading at- 
tentively, being one of the few books that incul- 
cate tolerance in an unalarming and inoffensive 
way." At Paris also Mr. Arnold met Prosper Merime'e, 
and dined with Sainte-Beuve. He was much amused 
to find himself described as "Monsieur le Professeur 
Docteur Arnold, Directeur-Ge"ne*ra] de toutes les Fxoles 
de la Grande Bretagne," which is certainly a compre- 
hensive title. 

On Mr. Arnold's return to England he joined the 
Queen's Westminster Volunteers ; and it is strange to 
read in a letter to his sister, dated the 21st of Novem- 
ber 1859, a refutation of the long since obsolete argu- 



v.] THE OXFORD CHAIR 59 

ment that it was dangerous to arm the people. " The 
bad feature in the proceeding," he says, " is the hideous 
English toadyism with which lords and great people 
are invested with the commands in the corps they join, 
quite without respect of any consideration of their 
efficiency. This proceeds from our national bane — 
the immense vulgar-mindedness, and, so far, real infe- 
riority of the English middle classes." It is important 
in these years, before Mr. Arnold took up definitely 
the business of a critic, to watch the development of 
his literary opinions. There was always something 
antipathetic to him in Tennyson. " The fault I find 
with Tennyson" (he wrote, on the 17th of December 
1860, about the Idylls of the King), " is that the pecul- 
iar charm and aroma of the Middle Age he does not 
give in them." That, I think, would be generally ad- 
mitted. Much more disputable is what follows. "The 
real truth is [always a suspicious beginning] that Ten- 
nyson, with all his temperament and artistic skill, is 
deficient in intellectual power." After all, he wrote 
In Memoriam. Matthew Arnold, despite his Sonnet, 
did not share the national idolatry of Shakespeare. 
Compared with Homer, he was imperfection to perfec- 
tion. 

Like most of the upper and middle classes at the 
time, Mr. Arnold completely misjudged the situation 
in America at the outbreak of the Civil War. On the 
28th of January 1861 he wrote to Mrs. Forster: "I 
have not much faith in the nobility of nature of the 
Northern Americans. I believe they would consent to 
any compromise sooner than let the Southern States 
go. However, I believe the latter mean to go, and 
think they will do better by going, so the baseness 



60 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

of the Xorth will not be tempted too strongly." Mrs. 
Forster's husband took a j aster view. 

In 1861 appeared, first as a Parliamentary Blue 
Book, and afterwards as an independent volume, Mr. 
Arnold's Popular Education in France, with Notices of 
that of EoUand and Switzerland. The Introduction, 
which alone has much interest now, was republished 
nearly twenty years afterwards in Mixed Essays, and 
called "Democracy." It is a State paper of great 
value and importance. Mr. Arnold was always a keen 
critic of his own countrymen. He had learned from 
father's eloquent and dignified Ia on Modern 

History, that to flatter a great nation like England 
was to insult her, and that it was part of true patriot- 
ism to tell her of her faults. In this paper, written 
with the admirable simplicity thai always distin- 
guished his style, and without the mannerisms that 
afterwards disfigured it. he argues that the English 
dread of interference by the 9 . formerly natural 
and reasonable, had become irrational and obsolete. 
An aristocrat: itive, he contended, was inclined 

to govern as little as possible, and such an executive 
England had hitherto possessed. But with the Bpread 
of democratic ideas, which he observed with the cold 
but appreciate pathy of a Whig, and the enlarge- 

ment of the franchise, which he dearly foresaw, there 
would, he thought, be more need and less repugnance 
for the action of the Government. He cites the 
ample of France, where the " common people," or, as we 
should say, the masses, were in his opinion superior to 
our own. The moral he drew was. of course, the neces- 
sity of public teaching, organised by the State. No 
other would have been relevant to his subject. Yet 



v.] THE OXFORD CHAIR 61 

it is remarkable that the schools which he recom- 
mended were not those elementary establishments set 
up ten years later by his brother-in-law, but the second- 
ary schools of France. He endeavoured therefore to 
combat the jealousy of the State which pervaded the 
middle classes, and to prove that they required its aid 
in bringing order out of chaos. Admitting that there 
was too much government in France, he urged that 
there was too little in England, and as an Englishman 
he pleaded for more. High reason and fine culture 
wrio, he said, the great objects for which the nation 
should strive. He lamented the decline of aristocratic 
culture, of which the fine flower in the eighteenth cen- 
tury was Lord Carteret. But culture, except so far as 
it involves leisure, has nothing to do with class, and 
Lord Carteret was a wholly exceptional man. If Mr. 
Arnold had taken the Lord Derby of his own day, and 
compared him with the Duke of Newcastle in Lord 
Carteret's time, or if he had contrasted Mr. Gladstone 
with Sir Robert Walpole, the result would have been 
wry different. But this is by the way. Mr. Arnold's 
main principle in this excellent essay is perfectly 
sound ; and though popular education did not develop 
itself in the precise form he expected, a deep debt of 
gratitude is due to him for the interest he aroused in 
its progress. 

In 1861 Mr. Arnold published his three lectures " On 
translating Homer," followed the next year by a fourth 
on the same subject called " Last Words." These most 
interesting and valuable discourses have been the de- 
light of all scholars ever since they appeared. They 
are among the author's most characteristic productions, 
showing even for the first time that tendency to the 



62 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

undue repetition of words and phrases which after- 
wards became a vice of his style. From one of Mr. 
Arnold's main conclusions I respectfully, and in good 
company, dissent. I cannot think that the English 
hexameter is the best metre for a translation of 
Homer. The English hexameter is an exotic, which 
does not flourish in our soil. Occasional instances to 
the contrary may be quoted from Longfellow's " Evan- 
geline" and from Kingsley's "Andromeda" — 

"Chanting the hundredth Psalm, that grand old Puritan 

anthem," 

which is Longfellow's, and 

"As when an osprey aloft, doek-eyebrowed, royally crested," 

which is Kingsley's) are perfect. But such successes 
cannot be maintained. So far as I know, the one ex- 
ample to the contrary in the English language is Dr. 
Hawtrey's famous translation from the third book of 
the Iliad, beginning 

•• Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia," 
and ending 
" There in their own dear land, their fatherland, Laced;emon." 

Mr. Arnold's own specimens do not rise much above 
mediocrity, and he must have been misled by personal 
friendship when he coin pared (.'lough's clever verse- 
making with the simple dignity of Homer. We may 
feel then that .Mr. Arnold was right when he declined 
the proposal to translate Homer himself, and yet be 
supremely grateful to him for having dealt in so lumi- 
nous a manner with the general principles of transla- 
tion. He was unfortunately led by the accidents of 



v.] THE OXFORD CHAIR 63 

time and place, or perhaps by the spirit of mockery, 
to bestow too much notice upon a very bad translation 
of Homer made by a very learned man. Mr. Francis 
Newman of Balliol, brother of the celebrated Cardinal, 
though eccentric in many ways, never did anything 
more eccentric than his translation of the Iliad, which, 
but for Mr. Arnold, would have died almost as soon as 
it was born. Pope, on the other hand, Mr. Arnold dis- 
misses with Bentley's scornful dictum, for which Pope 
put him in the "Dunciad," that it was a pretty poem, 
but not Homer. It is certainly not Homer, for the 
very good reason that Pope knew little or no Greek. 
But it is much more than a pretty poem, and it will 
never cease to be read. Such lines as — 

" Let tyrants govern with an iron rod, 
Oppress, destroy, and be the scourge of God ; 
Since he who like a father held his reign, 
So soon forgot, was just and mild in vain," 

are imperishable, and no one would wish that they 
should perish. Pope's Iliad and Pope's Odyssey are 
great English epics. To Chapman also Mr. Arnold is 
less than just. Even if Chapman had not inspired 
Keats's immortal Sonnet, the full proud sail of his 
great verse would still be the best English equivalent 
for the majestic roll of the Greek hexameter. 

Mr. Arnold's test of Homeric translation is to ask 
how it affects those who both know Greek and can 
appreciate poetry, such as Dr. Hawtrey of Eton, Dr. 
Thompson of Trinity, and Mr. Jowett of Balliol. Mr. 
Arnold rightly finds fault with Mr. Buskin's fantastic 
theory, that in referring to the death of Castor and 
Pollux, Homer called the earth in which they lay 



Ci MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

" life-giving," because lie wished to relieve the gloom 
of the picture. Homer called the earth life-giving, 
there as elsewhere, because it was a fixed epithet of 
the earth. But Mr. Arnold himself is almost as fan- 
tastic when he compares Homer with Voltaire because 
they are both lucid. Certainly this comparison will 
not help the translator " to reproduce on the general 
reader, as nearly as possible, the general effect of 
Homer." Mr. Arnold believed as passionately as Mr. 
Gladstone and Mr. Lang in the unity of Homer, which 
Sir Richard Jebb tells us is incredible. "The insur- 
mountable obstacle to believing the Iliad the consoli- 
dated work of several poets is this : that the work 
of great masters is unique, and the Iliad [he does 
not here mention the Odyssey] has a great master's 
genuine stamp, and that stamp is the <jr<m>l style." 
What, then, is the grand style? It "arises in poetry 
when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with 
simplicity or with severity a serious subject.*' The 
Iliad and the Odyssey are certainly not what we our- 
selves mean by ballad-poetry, and attempts like Dr. 
Maginn's to translate them into a series of ballads 
have always failed. It is a pity that Mr. Arnold 
mixed up this wholesome doctrine with the highly 
controversial statement, from which his own father 
would have been the first to dissent, that Macaulay's 
"pinchbeck" Lays were "one continual falsetto." 
The remark, moreover, is quite irrelevant, for Ma- 
caulay never dreamed of imitating Homer. His only 
published translation from Homer is in the metre of 
Tope, and as unlike the Lays as possible. 

Homer, says Mr. Arnold, is rapid, plain, simple, and 
noble. The great mine of diction for the English 



v.] THE OXFORD CHAIR 65 

translator of Homer, he adds, is the English Bible. 
So far, so good. But it is a long way from those 
premisses to the conclusion that the hexameter should 
be the form of verse employed. Mr. Arnold's case is 
here not a strong one. " I know all that is said," he 
tells us, "against the use of hexameters in English 
poetry ; but it comes only to this, that among us they 
have not yet been used on any considerable scale with 
success. Solvitur ambulando : this is an objection which 
can best be met by producing good English hexame- 
ters." That is not quite all that can be said against 
the use of hexameters in English. It may also be 
said that they depend upon quantity, and that English 
poetry depends upon accent. But taking Mr. Arnold 
at his word, I cannot think that his own hexameters 
justify his theory. Here are some of them — 

" So shone forth, in front of Troy, by the bed of Xanthus, 
Between that and the ships, the Trojan's numerous fires. 
In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires : by each one 
There sat fifty men, in the ruddy light of the fire : 
By their chariots stood the steeds, and champed the white 

barley, 
"While their masters sat by the fire and waited for morning." 

The last line is the best, but all are wooden. Compare 

Tennyson's rendering of the same passage in blank 

verse — 

" So many a fire between the ships and stream 

Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy, 
A thousand on the plain ; and close by each 
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire ; 
And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds, 
Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn." 

These verses are far more truly Homeric than 
Mr. Arnold's limping hexameters. It is the more 



66 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

strange that Mr. Arnold should have rejected the 
claims of blank verse, because his own " Sohrab and 
Rustum," to say nothing of " Balder Dead," is especially 
Homeric. To Worsley's Odyssey, which adopts the 
Spenserian stanza, Mr. Arnold pays in " Last "Words" 
a due tribute of high praise. In this same lecture 
he alludes to the death of Clough, which he after- 
wards lamented in verse not unlike that consecrated 
by Moschus to the death of Bion. 

Mr. Arnold's life, which was not an eventful one, can 
be traced with sufficient clearness from his letters. 
He thought " Essays and Reviews " a breach of the 
scriptural rule against putting new wine into old 
bottles, and had needless fears for their effect upon 
Dr. Temple's position at Rugby. Nothing has ever 
been able to keep Dr. Temple back, or to diminish the 
public respect for his rugged, massive character. Early 
in lsf.l Sainte-Beuve published his volume on Chateau- 
briand, with a French translation of Matthew Arnold's 
poem on " Obermann," which naturally gave the author 
much pleasure. In the same year Mr. Arnold contrib- 
uted to a volume called Victoria Begia, edited by 
Adelaide Procter, the lovely poem entitled "A South- 
ern Night." These exquisite stanzas were written to 
commemorate his brother William, who died at Gibral- 
tar on the way back from India in April 1859. The 
best known, and perhaps the best, lines in it, are those 
which describe us world-pervading English folk who 
are ever on the move — 

" And see all sights from pole to pole, 
And glance and nod and bustle by — 
And never once possess our soul 
Before we die." 



v.] THE OXFORD CHAIR 67 

The Revised Code of 1862, in which Mr. Arnold 
took a keen, though not a friendly interest, was a 
consequence of the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, 
appointed the previous year. But it went beyond 
the Report of the Commissioners. It was really the 
work of Mr. Lowe, the Vice-President of the Council, 
and Mr. Lingen, the Secretary to the Department. 
Mr. Lowe was, perhaps, the ablest, certainly the 
cleverest, man who ever held that important office. 
Like Mr. Lingen, he had highly distinguished himself 
at Oxford, but his views on the education of the 
masses were strictly and exclusively ultilitarian. He 
was very clear-headed; he always knew what he 
wanted ; and though he rather liked flouting popular 
prejudices, he had the knack of coining popular phrases. 
Taking up a remark of the Commissioners that too 
much time was spent in the national schools upon the 
performances of prize pupils, while the work of teach- 
ing the rudiments to the general mass was propor- 
tionately neglected, he proposed a capitation grant, 
combined with payment by results. Thus, he said, 
if elementary education was not cheap, it would be 
efficient; if not efficient, it would be cheap. The 
epigram was ingenious, and the phrase " payment by 
results " succeeded well. But Mr. Lowe soon found, as 
most ministers do find who touch education, that he had 
raised a storm. The protests of " born educationalists," 
like Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth and Mr. Arnold, 
might have been disregarded. But the Conservative 
Opposition, who were very strong in the Parliament 
of 1859, took the matter up. They had the Church 
of England behind them, and the Revised Code was 
itself revised. One-third only of the Government 



68 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

grant was given for attendance, the remaining two 
thirds being awarded only after examination. Thus 
Mr. Arnold, who had from the first attacked the 
Revised Code as too mechanical, achieved at hast 
half a victory. He was rather afraid of losing his 
place for writing against his chiefs. But nothing 
happened to him, and Mr. Lowe himself had soon 
afterwards to • 
The ( Ireweian ( hratioD ird, which accompanies 

the bestowal of honorary d . is delivered alter- 

nately by the Public Orator and the Professor of 
Poetry. It tell to MEr. Arnold's turn in 1862, when 
Lord PalmerstoD was made a Doctor of civil Law. 
The Prince Consort and Lord Canning had both died 

within the year, so that there QO lack of topics 

for this annual e \ in elegant Latinity. But 

Mr. Arnold did not confine himself to his official work 
and his Professorial dutii He made a vigorous 

attack upon Bishop C< 's hook on the Penta- 

'a, which gave great offence to many of his Libera] 

friends. The article was pu I in MacmiUan*8 

Magazine for January 1863, with the title "The 

op ami the Philosopher." The Philosopher v. 
Spinoza, with whom few- Biblical critics, and certainly 
not Mr. Arnold himself, could he favourably com- 
pared. Bishop Colei ook has long been forgotten, 
and ho himself is remembered rather as the fearless 
champion of the Zulus than as the corrector of 
figures in the Mosaic record. Mr. Arnold v. 

perhaps, needlessly severe when he described the 
l'.ishop as eliciting a " titter from educated Europe." 

But it was true that his arithmetical computations 
neither edified the many nor informed the few. When 



v.] THE OXFORD CUAIR 69 

Mr. Disraeli spoke of prelates whose study of theology 
commenced after they had grasped the crozier, he hit 
the point. These absurdities and impossibilities in 
Biblical arithmetic — Colenso's "favourite science," as 
Mr. Arnold called it — were not new to the learned 
world. Nor did they affect the questions of believing 
in God and leading a good life, which Spinoza, a lay 
saint, considered to be alone essential. In the follow- 
ing number of MacmiUan Mr. Arnold at once served a 
friend, and expressed the positive side of his theology, 
by a sympathetic review of Stanley's Lectures on the 
Jewish Church. On the death of Thackeray, which 
occurred at the end of this year, Mr. Arnold pro- 
nounced him not to be a great writer. This is a 
judgment which, coming from any one else, Mr. 
Arnold himself would have called saugrenu. If 
Thackeray was not a great writer, no English novelist 
was so. Vanity Fair, Esmond} Barry Lyndon, and 
the first volume of Pendennis are scarcely to be 
matched in English fiction. 

Although Mr. Arnold was sent abroad to report on 
primary education only, he also contrived to see some 
of the best secondary schools in France, and upon his 
visits to them he founded his treatise on A French 
Eton, which appeared in 1864. The name was not 
very happily chosen. Mr. Arnold was easily con- 
victed by Mr. Stephen Hawtrey of not understanding 
the tutorial system at Eton. Nobody understands the 
tutorial system at Eton except Eton men, and they 
cannot explain it. But for the rest the book, besides 
being most agreeably written, is both interesting and 
important. Mr. Arnold's French Eton is the Lyceum 
at Toulouse, which he rather minutely describes. It 



70 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

is, or was, maintained partly by the State and partly 
by the Commune. It comprised both day-boys and 
boarders; there were scholarships open to competi- 
tion, and, by way of a conscience clause, there was a 
Protestant minister to conduct the religious teaching 
of the Protestant pupils. The subjects of tuition, 
which were the same in all the French Lyceums, dif- 
fered chiefly from what was then taught at Eton by 
including science and French grammar. Science is 
now taught in all the public schools of England. 
English Grammar is still, 1 believe, neglected. No- 
body made any profit out of these Lyceums, and the 
terms were therefore much lower than in our public 
schools, ranging from fifty pounds a hoarder to twenty 
pounds a day-boy. It is a misrepresentation to say 
that Mr. Arnold compared these French schools, and 
their too systematic routine, with Eton, or Harrow, or 
his own Rugby. He contrasted them with the schools 
available for the less wealthy portion of the middle 

classes in England, and, in spite of the excellent work 
since done by the Endowed School Commissioners, he 
might make the same contrast still. Our secondary 
education is still the weak point in our teaching, and 
it was not Mr. Arnold's fault that his timely counsels 
were neglected. 

But the most fascinating part of a delightful book 
is the account of Lacordaire's private school at Sor- 
reze. Here the payment was astonishingly small, 
varying from five to fifteen pounds a year. Of Lacor- 
daire himself, whom, with all his strictness, his pupils 
did not merely respect but love, Mr. Arnold paints a 
(harming picture, as unlike his father as his con- 
science would let him. The conclusion he draws 



v.] THE OXFORD CHAIR 71 

from the whole matter is that the law of supply and 
demand will not suffice for education in the true 
sense of the word. "What made it, according to his 
view, more efficient in France than in England was 
first supervision, and secondly publicity. To the 
familiar maxim that the State had better leave things 
alone he opposed Burke's definition of the State as 
beneficence acting by rule. From Burke's political 
philosophy Mr. Arnold drew most of his own lessons 
in politics, and, as an inspector of schools appointed 
by the State, it was natural that he should disbelieve 
in the sufficiency of private enterprise. So far as ele- 
mentary education was concerned, he had his way. 
He lived to see it made compulsory, though not to see 
it made free. The upper and middle classes were left 
to educate themselves, or to go uneducated, as they 
pleased. 



CHAPTER VI 

ESSAYS IS 0B1TICIBM 

Mr. Arnold was, as we have seen, elected Professor 
of Poetry at Oxford in L857. The election was for a 
period of five years, but in accordance with custom he 
was re-elected for a similar term in 1862. He had 
more than justified the choice of the university, and 
his literary reputation was firmly established. At 
that time Mr. Disraeli was Leader of the Conservative 
party in the House of Commons, and at the very height 
of his Parliamentary powers. No politician except 
Lord Palmerstoo had then more influence in the 
country, for Mr. Gladstone's popularity was to come, 
and Lord Derby's never came. At Aston Clinton, Sir 
Anthony de Rothschild's house in Buckinghamshire, 
where he was in the habit of staying, Mr. Arnold 
met Mr. Disraeli on the 27th of January L864 Mr. 
Disraeli was always at his best with men of letters. 
He sincerely respected them, and was proud to be 
one of their number. On this occasion he was very 
gracious to Mr. Arnold. " You have a great future 
before you," he said, "and you deserve it." He then 
went on to add that he had given up literature because 
he was not one of those who could do two things at 
once, but that he admired most the men like Cicero, 
who could. Bishop Wilberforce was another guest, 
and preached the next day a sermon which, in Mr. 

72 



chap, vi.] ESSAYS IX CRITICISM 73 

Arnold's opinion, showed hini to have no " real power 
of mind." "A truly emotional spirit," Mr. Arnold 
wrote to his mother, "he undoubtedly has, beneath 
his outside of society-haunting and men-pleasing, and 
each of the two lives he leads gives him the more zest 
for the other." It was clearly the Bishop from whom 
Mr. Arnold drew the type that " make the best of both 
worlds." There are probably few who would deny 
that he correctly estimated " the great lord bishop of 
England," as Wilberforce's satellites liked to call him, 
and as he liked to be called. His appreciation of 
Tennyson, on the other hand, was utterly inadequate. 
" I do not," he wrote to Mr. Dykes Campbell on the 
22nd of September 18G4, "I do not think Tennyson 
a great and powerful spirit in any line, as Goethe was 
in the line of modern thought, Wordsworth in that of 
contemplation, Byron even in that of passion; and 
unless a poet, especially a poet at this time of day, 
is that, my interest in him is only slight, and my 
conviction that he will not finally stand high is firm." 
It is strange that any critic should attribute want of 
sympathy with modern thought to the author of 
In Memoriam. It is stranger still that he should 
consider Byron a greater poet than Tennyson. But, ^ 
for some reason or other, Mr. Arnold did not appre- 
ciate his English contemporaries. That reason was 
certainly not envy or jealousy, for of such feelings he 
was iucapable. As his friend Lord Coleridge said, 
they " withered in his presence." The prejudice did 
not apply to foreigners. He idolised Sainte-Tk'uve. 
Nor was it strictly confined to contemporaries. He 
was never just to Shelley, and not till the close of his 
life to Keats. He seems to have got it into his head 



74 .MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

that Tennyson was being " run " against Wordsworth, 
which is the last thing that Tennyson himself would 
have desired. But it is true that forty years ago 
Tennyson suffered a good deal from injudicious ad- 
mirers. His May Queen, and Airy, Fairy Lilian 
were extolled as gems of the purest water. Rash, 
however, as this indiscriminate praise may have been, 
it should not have prevented Mr. Arnold from admir- 
ing Tithonus. 

Essays in Criticism appeared in 18G5. It is Mr. 
Arnold's most important work in prose, the central 
book, so to speak, of his life. Although it was not at 
first widely read, it made an immediate and a pro- 
found impression upon competent judges of literature. 
There had been nothing like it since Hazlitt. There 
has been nothing like it since. M 1 . Arnold's judg- 
ments are sometimes eccentric, and the place which he 
assigns to the two Pe Gue'rins is altogether out of 
proportion. But the value of Essays in Criticism does 
not depend upon this or that isolated opinion ex- 
pressed by its author. Mr. Arnold did not merely 
criticise books himself. He taught others how to 
criticise them, lie laid down principles, if he did not 
always keep the principles he laid down. Nobody, 
after reading Essays in Criticism, has any excuse for 
not being a critic. Mr. Buskin once lamented that 
he had made a great number of entirely foolish people 
take an interest in art, and if there were too few 
critics in 18G5, there may be too many now. But 
Mr. Arnold is not altogether responsible for the 
quantity. He has more to do with the quality, and 
the quality has beyond question been improved. 

The famous Preface to Essays in Criticism was in the 



vi.] ESSAYS IN CRITICISM 75 

second edition, the edition of 1869, curtailed, and, 
perhaps wisely, shorn of some ephemeral allusions. 
It contains, as every one knows, the exquisite address 
to Oxford: " beautiful city, so venerable, so lovely, so 
unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, 
so serene." The negative part of this praise could 
hardly be given now. Even in 1865 Oxford was not 
quite so free from intellectual disturbances as in Mr. 
Arnold's undergraduate days. But the question he 
asked then may be asked still: "And yet, steeped 
in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to 
the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the 
last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny 
that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling 
us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, 
to perfection — to beauty, in a word, which is only 
truth seen from another side, — nearer, perhaps, than 
all the science of Tubingen?" Of science, in the 
narrow or physical sense, Mr. Arnold knew little or 
nothing, and he had not his father's love of history. 
But of the old Oxford education, Uteres humaniores, 
there have been few finer products. Excellent, in a 
lighter style, is his apology to Mr. Wright, the trans- 
lator of Homer, for having been too vivacious. " Yes, 
the world will soon be the Philistines' ! and then with 
every voice, not of thunder, silenced, and the whole 
earth filled and ennobled every morning by the 
magnificent roaring of the young lions of the Daily 
Telegraph, we shall all yawn in one another's faces 
with the dismallest, the most unimpeachable gravity." 
For it is in this volume, in his essay on Heine, that 
Mr. Arnold first uses the word " Philistine," borrowed 
of course from the German, and it played afterwards 



76 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

so large a part in his philosophy, that the passage 
may as well be quoted in full. 

"Philistinism! — we have not the expression in 
English. Perhaps we have not the word because we 
have so much of the thing. At Soli I imagine they 
did not talk of Solecisms; and here, at the very 
head-quarters of Goliath, nobody talks of Philistinism. 
The French have adopted the term epicier (grocer), to 
designate the sort of being whom the Germans desig- 
nate by the term Philistine; but the Frem-h term — 
besides that it casts a slur upon a respectable class, 
composed of living and susceptible members, while the 
original Philistines are dead and buried long ago — is 
really, I think, in itself much less apt and expressive 
than tli'- German term, Efforts have been made to 
obtain in English some term equivalent to PliUister or 
epicier; Mr. Carlyle has made several such efforts: 
'respectability with its thousand gigs,' he says; well, 
the occupant of every one of these gigs is, Mr. Carlyle 
means, a Philistine. II r, this word respectable 

is far too valuable a word to be thus perverted from 
its proper meaning; if tin- English are ever to have a 
word tor the thing we are speaking of — and so pro- 
digious are the changes which the modern spirit is 
introducing, that even we English shall, perhaps, one 
day come to want BUCh a word — I think we had much 
better take the term Philistine itself." 

The Philistines should, perhaps, have been intro- 
duced to our notice in the first essay, which deals 
with the function of criticism. Here, however, we 
get another of Mr. Arnold's favourite sentiments, his 
worship of Burke. Heaven forbid that I should say a 
word against that great man — great in politics, great 



T '] ESSAYS IN CRITICISM 77 

in literature, passionate in patriotism, fertile in ideas. 
But to the proposition that he was the greatest writer 
of English prose I respectfully demur. The greatest 
writer of English prose is Shakespeare. I do not 
think that Burke wrote as pure English as his com- 
patriot Goldsmith, or even as Swift. Eloquent, 
massively eloquent, as he can be, he does not in my 
judgment rise to the level of Bacon, or Milton, or 
Dryden, or Sir Thomas Browne. In this essay, per- 
haps the best he ever wrote, Mr. Arnold quotes Burke's 
"return upon himself" in the Thoughts on French 
Affairs, as one of the finest things in English literature, 
and yet characteristically un-English. Well, Burke 
was not an Englishman. He was an Irishman, and 
he sometimes indulged in the "blind hysterics of the 
Celt." The passage here quoted by Mr. Arnold is a 
very fine one, and deserves his panegyric. "If," says 
Burke, "a great change is to be made in human 
affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the 
general opinions and feelings will draw that way. 
Every fear, every hope will forward it, and then they 
who persist in opposing this mighty current in human 
affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of 
Providence itself than the mere designs of men. 
They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse 
and obstinate." Mr. Arnold, in citing these noble 
words, written in December 1791, has fallen into 
a strange historical error. Pie calls these TJioughts 
071 French Affairs "some of the last pages" Burke 
" ever wrote." Burke died in 1797. The Letter to a 
Noble Lord and the three Letters on a Regicide Peace 
were written in 1796. He was past returning upon 
himself then. Except where Ireland was concerned, 



78 MATTHEW AKNOLD [chap. 

the French Kevolution had made him incapable of 
seeing more than one side to a question. The British 
Constitution had always been his idol. He forgot, as 
Mr. Goldwin Smith says, that nothing human is sacred. 
The first principle of criticism was, said Mr. Arnold, 
disinterestedness. This end was to be attained by 
"keeping aloof from practice," by a free play of the 
mind, and by the avoidance of ulterior considerations, 
political, social, or religious. Two of these rules are 
negative, as indeed, for that matter, are the Ten Com- 
mandments. The third is vague. It is difficult to 
believe that Mr. Arnold would have been a worse 
critic if he had written more poetry after he was 
thirty-five. And he certainly did not agree with 
Mark Pattison in holding that the man who wanted 
to persuade anybody of anything was not a man of 
letters. He was a missionary, almost an apostle, the 
antagonist of Philistinism, the champion of sweetness 
and light. His own particular criticisms were not 
always, to use his own phrase, " of the centre." 
His great and distinguishing merit as a critic was 
that he had a theory, that he regarded his subject as a 
whole, that he could not merely give reasons for his 
opinions, but show that they were something more 
than opinions, that they were the deliberate judgments 
of a trained intelligence working upon a systematic 
order of ideas. In this very Essay he contrasts the 
disinterestedness of French with the partisanship of 
English critcism, and the passage is important, on 
more grounds than one. "An organ," he says, "like 
the Revue des Deux Mondes, having for its main 
function to understand and utter the best that is 
known and thought in the world, existing, it may be 



vi.] ESSAYS IN CRITICISM 79 

said, as just an organ for the free play of the mind, 
we have not; but we have the Edinburgh Review, exist- 
ing as an organ of the Old Whigs, and for as much 
play of the mind as may suit its being that ; we have 
the Quarterly Review, existing as an organ of the Tories, 
and for as much play of mind as may suit its being 
that; we have the British Quarterly Review, existing as 
an organ of the political Dissenters, and for as much 
play of mind as may suit its being that ; we have the 
Times, existing as an organ of the common, satisfied, 
well-to-do Englishman, and for as much play of mind 
as may suit its being that." Even in the great days 
of M. Buloz, when the Revue des Deux Mondes really 
was the first literary organ of Europe, it was too 
aristocratic and too orthodox to deserve the praise of 
pure intellectual impartiality. But it was true then, 
and, with qualifications, it is true now, that French 
magazines and newspapers treat literature far more 
seriously than our own. What change there has been 
since 1865 on this side of the Channel is all for the 
better, and is due to no man so much as to Matthew 
Arnold. But, as I have said, I quote this passage for 
another reason. It is the first conspicuous instance of 
a fault which grew upon Mr. Arnold until at last it 
almost destroyed the pleasure of reading his prose. 
I mean the trick of repetition. Repetition is not 
always a vice. Delicately managed by great writers, 
it may be a powerful mode of heightening rhetorical 
effect. But the art of using without abusing it is a 
very difficult, and a very delicate one. Beautiful 
examples of it may be found in the Collects of the 
English Church. Take, for instance, the Collect for 
St. John the Evangelist's Day: — 



80 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

"Merciful Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright 
beams of light upon thy Church, that it, being en- 
lightened by the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and 
Evangelist Saint John, may so walk in the light of 
thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of 
everlasting life ; through Jesus Christ our Lord." 

Here the repetition of the word "light,'"' with the still 
more beautiful repetition of the word " charity " in the 
great chapter of Corinthians, is a real artistic merit. It 
charms, and it tells. But the words " as may suit its 
being that " have no attraction or distinction of any kind. 
The first time they occur, one passes them over without 
much notice. The fourth time they become almost in- 
tolerable. It is amazing that a man of Mr. Arnold's 
fastidious taste and true scholarship should not have 
instinctively avoided so paltry a device. But the fact 
is that Mr. Arnold had the gift of seeing his own faults 
without seeing that they were his own. His Essay 
on the Literary Influence of Academies is a most brilliant 
and entertaining one, much better worth reading than 
Swift's on the same subject. He attributes to Acade- 
mies the power of saving nations from the "note of 
provinciality." Nowhere is Mr. Arnold's peculiar gift 
of urbane and humorous persuasiveness better dis- 
played than in his own account of how the French 
Academy was founded by Richelieu. He quotes a 
sentence from Bossuet's panegyric of St. Paul, hardly 
to be surpassed for eloquence and grandeur. He con- 
trasts it with some rather coarse specimens of Burke 
and Jeremy Taylor at their worst. These, he says, 
are provincial, Bossuet's prose is prose of the centre. 
Very likely he is right. Very likely an academy, if it 
could not bring us all up to the level of Bossuet, 



vi.] ESSAYS IN CBITICISM 81 

would have kept great English writers more within 
bounds. An English Academy might, as Mr. Arnold 
implies, have given Addison more ideas. Joubert 
might have had fewer ideas if there had been no 
French Academy. Although it seems to me paradoxi- 
cal, I will not deny it. But then suddenly one lights, 
or rather stumbles, upon this sentence. " In short, 
where there is no centre like an academy, if you have 
genius and powerful ideas, you are apt not to have 
the best style going ; if you have precision of style 
and not genius, you are apt not to have the best ideas 
going." Is that " prose of the centre " ? Is it not 
rather tricky, flashy, provincial ? 

Mr. Arnold's affection for Maurice and Eugenie de 
Guerin, that hapless brother and sister who excited 
the sympathy of Sainte-Beuve, is almost too gentle 
and touching for criticism. And his favourite quota- 
tion from Maurice de Guerin's Centaure has no doubt a 
singular charm. But when it comes to saying that 
the talent of this young Frenchman, now almost for- 
gotten in his own country, had "more of distinction 
and power than the talent of Keats," the English 
reader must feel that if this is to be " central," pro- 
vinciality has its consolations. But indeed, Mr. 
Arnold's reputation would have stood higher if he had 
left Keats alone. He cannot even quote him correctly. 
Keats did not write, as in the essay on Maurice de 
Guerin Mr. Arnold makes him write, 

"moving waters at their priestlike task 
Of cold ablution round Earth's human shores." 

He wrote pure ablution. What a difference ! How 
tame and awkward is the one ; how supremely perfect 



82 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

is the other ! Matthew Arnold's avowed master in 
criticism was Sainte-Beuve. He could hardly have 
had a better. The doctrine of disinterestedness is 
undoubtedly Sainte-Beuve's, and may be found at 
the beginning of the essay on Mademoiselle de 
l'Espinasse : — 

" Le critique ne doit point avoir de partialite et n'est 
d'aucune coterie. II n'epouse les gens que par un 
temps, et ne fait que traverser les groupes divers sans 
s'y enchainer jamais. II passe resolument d'un camp 
a l'autre; et de ce qu'il a rendu justice d'un cote ce ne 
ltd est jamais une raison de la refuser a ce qui est 
vis-a-vis. Ainsi, tour a tour, il est a Rome ou a 
Carthage, tantot pour Argos et tantot pour Ilion." 
— " The critic ought not to be partial, and has no 
set. He takes up people only for a time, and 
does no more than pass through different groups 
without ever chaining himself down. He passes firm- 
ly from one camp to the other; and never, because 
he has done justice to one side, refuses the same to 
the opposite party. Thus, turn by turn, he is at 
Rome and at Carthage, sometimes for Argos, and 
sometimes for Troy." 

"Tros Tyriusque inihi nullo discrimine agetur." 

But if it was to Sainte-Beuve, and not to George 
Sand, that Mr. Arnold owed his excessive fondness 
for the De Guerins, the benefit was a doubtful one. 
They fill, as Mr. Saintsbury says, too large a space in 
a volume which contains such subjects as Heine, 
Spinoza, and Marcus Aurelius. Mr. Arnold, if I may 
say so, carried too far his belief, sound enough so far 
as it goes, in the superiority of French prose to French 



vi.] ESSAYS IN CJilTICISM 83 

verse. It is perhaps impossible for an Englishman to 
appreciate French Alexandrines, unless, like Gibbon, 
he be half a Frenchman himself. But it is rash for a 
foreigner to say that the metre of Racine is inade- 
quate, and the verse of the Phe'dre not a vehicle for 
"high poetry." And what of this couplet from 
Victor Hugo ? 

"Et la Seine fuyait avec un triste bruit, 
Sous ce grand chevalier du gouffre et de la nuit." 

Mr. Arnold disliked Alexandrines as he disliked the 
" heroic " couplets of Pope. But then, these personal 
distastes are, as he has himself taught us, eccentricities, 
which criticism rejects as irrelevant. That "Addison 
has in his prose an intrinsically better vehicle for his 
genius than Pope in his couplet " is not a self-evident 
proposition. It must be proved, and Mr. Arnold makes 
no attempt to prove it. " Pope, in his Essay on Man" 
says Mr. Arnold, is " thus at a disadvantage compared 
with Lucretius in his poem on Nature : Lucretius has 
an adequate vehicle, Pope has not. Nay, though 
Pope's genius for didactic poetry was not less than 
that of Horace, while his satirical power was certainly 
greater, still one's taste receives, I cannot but think, 
a certain satisfaction when one reads the Epistles and 
Satires of Horace, which it fails to receive when one 
reads the Satires and Epistles of Pope." Surely this 
is paradoxical, if not perverse. That Lucretius was 
a far greater poet than Pope few would, I suppose, 
deny, and his best hexameters are hardly equalled even 
by Virgil's. But few and far between are the poetical 
lines, such as 

" Gra;cia barbarian lento collisa duello " 



84 .MATTHEW ARNOLD [ciui. 

in the s 8 and Epistles of Horace. Horace wrote 
thorn in a professedly prose style (y rmo) not 

in poetic form, and to an ordinary ear his numbers 
(I am not, of co; . i 1 1 u r to the < Nles) are far l< 

tuneful than Pope's. Bta • grotesq 

is the judgment thi I 81 illey lia<l neither intellectual 

ugh, nor culture enough, to master the i 
of words. Was it not this S who wrote t 

•■ Adoi /' and the "Ode to the West Wind"? The 

of Bis Gue"rin with Mi 

Emma Tatham is rather r> Mr. Arnold. P 

Mi I lam and her "union in church-fellowship 
with the at H 9 [uare Chapel, M 

might ha. It is 

never worth while I on, 

with 

I . I !■ ine, from whii h I havi tdy 

quoted the t Philisti n- 

taii it i ful, 

iin; and widely et: • : 

thi] Perl tps thi >n rather than a 

definition, and perl d Mr. Arnold's own shown 

it would not apply to the French language. B 
genera] truth it is striking, and it is justified by I 
f mankind. In this sam< 
he It' t, if not quite, for the fit 

time his tip hit-h led him alto 

ray. < be is a n I tion. To 

make - real it would be ne I i prohibit 

intermarriage, or rather it would 1 iry 

to do o. Even thei ■ would still 

be, as Bam 8 of human nature in 



vi.] ESSAYS IN CRITICISM 85 

people. "Aristocracies," Mr. Arnold tells us, « are, as 
such, naturally impenetrable by ideas; but their in- 
dividual members have high courage and a turn for 
breaking bounds; and a man of genius, who is the 
born child of the idea, happening to be born in the 
aristocratic ranks, chafes against the obstacles which 
prevent him from fully developing it.*' All this is 
very fanciful. Byron and Shelley were "members of 
the aristocratic class." "What then ? They were Byron 
and Shelley. They were as unlike each other as two 
contemporary Englishmen could well be. Byron was 
childishly and vulgarly proud of his social position. 
Shelley cared no more for it than he cared for the 
binomial theorem. The Scottish peasantry are not 
naturally impenetrable to ideas. But Bums chafed 
against the obstacles which prevented him from fully 
developing his genius, and if, as somebody said. Byron 
was a Harrow boy, Burns was a plough boy. The per- 
centage of impenetrability to ideas is probably much 
the same in one class as in another. Mr. Arnold 
pronounces Heine's weakness to have been, not as 
the said, deficiency in love, but "deficiency in 
self-: , in true dignity of character." But this is 

not literary criticism, and to Heine's literary great- 
no man has paid more sympathetic homage than 
Matthew Arnold. 

The essay on ''Pagan and "Mediaeval Religious 
Sentiment" is best known by the charming transla- 
tion from the fifteenth Idyll of Theocritus which it 
contains. But the essay has other, and perhaps higher, 
merits than this. Gorgo and Braxinoe are indeed de- 
lightfully natural characters. The Hymn to Adonis is 
a beautiful and highly finished piece of composition. 



86 MATTIIEW ARNOLD [chap. 

But Theocritus was pre-eminently the poet of passion 
and of nature. This satirical sketch of town life 
is one of the least Theocritean things in him. It is, 
however, admirably suited to Mr. Arnold's purpose, 
which was to contrast Paganism with Medievalism, 
Theocritus with St. Francis. Side by side with the 
Hymn to Adonis he sets the Canticle of St. Francis, 
and thus he comments upon them. 

"Now, the poetry of Theocritus's hymn is poetry 
treating the world according to the demand of the 
es; the poetry of St. Francis's hymn is poetry 
treating the world according to the demand of the 
heart and imagination. The first takes the world 
by its ontward, sensible Bide; ti rod by its in- 

ward, symbolical I first admits as much of 

the world as is pleasure-giving; tfa rod admits 

the whole world, rough and smooth, painful and 
pleasure-giving, all alike, but all transfigured by the 
power of a spiritual emotion, all brought under a law 
of supersensual Love, having its seat in the soul." 

That is Matthew Am. .Id, as it seems to me, at his 

very best Admirable also is this: — "I wish to 

decide nothing as of my own authority; the great 

art of criticism is to gi elf out of the way and 

to let humanity decide.'' But at the close of the 
essay he strikes a lower note, he almost touches slang. 
After a fine translation of s noble passage in Soph- 
ocles, he says, " Let St. Francis — nay, or Luther 
cither — beat that 1" This is not a dignified finale to 
a classical piece. 

The essay on Joubert is one of Mi. Arnold's most 
charming and most characteristic studies. Joubert is 
not, perhaps — indeed Mr. Arnold admits it — a great 



vi.] S8SATS IN CRITICISM 87 

writer. But he is a most subtle and suggestive one. 
He is also one whom few English readers would have 
found out for themselves, and is therefore very well 
suited for the sort of essay in which Matthew Arnold 
shone. The comparison with Coleridge, through strik- 
ing and brilliant, is not very fruitful, for it is rather 
a contrast than a parallel. The translations from 
Joubert's Thoughts, exquisitely felicitous as they are, 
seem to me too paraphrastic, too far from the original. 
The rich excellence of this essay lies in its description 
of Joubert's character, and of the intellectual atmos- 
phere in which he lived. There is a good deal in 
Joubert, whose life covered the second half of the 
eighteenth century, more like Newman than ( loleridge. 
This, for instance: "Do not bring into the domain of 
reasoning that which belongs to our innermost feeling. 
State truths of sentiment, and do not try to prove 
them. There is a danger in such proofs, for in argu- 
ing it is necessary to treat that which is in question as 
something problematic : now that which we accustom 
ourselves to treat as problematic, ends by appearing 
to us as really doubtful. . . . 'Fear God' has made 
many men pious; the proofs of the existence of God 
have made many men atheists.'' There is a passage in 
the Grammar of Assent which may well have been 
suggested by that. Joubert is not, and never could 
be, a popular author, and much of his peculiar aroma 
cannot be preserved in translation. But of religious 
sentiment, as distinguished from theological dogma, 
there have been few such fascinating teachers, and 
this no doubt it was, not merely the praise of Sainte- 
Beuve, which recommended him to Matthew Arnold. 
Those who deny the possibility of undogmatic Chris- 



88 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

tianity must, among other things, explain Joubert 
away. 

The two strictly philosophical essays are devoted re- 
spectively to Spinoza and to Marcus Aurelius. For the 
essay on Joubert is more than half literary, while the 
others are literature pure and simple. Of Matthew 
Arnold as a philosopher it may be said that, though 
clear, he was aot deep, and that though gentle, he was 
not dull. He abhorred pedantry so much that he shrank 
from system, but he always had a keen insight into his 
author's meaning, and he was a master of lucid ex- 
position. His account of Baruch, or Benedict, Spinoza, 
cast out of the Portuguese synagogue at Amsterdam 
with a curse that Ernulphns might have envied, is 
singularly attractive, as indeed is the man himself. 
Expelled by the J< t S i cover became a chris- 

tian. But in his lite lie was faultless, and QO man 
better fulfilled the injunction of the prophet Micah. 
"Do justice and love mercy, and walk humbly with 
thy God." Although he laboured, like so many pro- 
foundly religious men, under the Imputation of atheism, 
he was really, as < roethe said of him, "Gott-betrunken," 

intoxicated with the divine nature, which he felt around 
him as well as above him. The Puble, that is to say 
the Old Testament, was his favourite book, and the 
subject of his constant study. He was the first and 
greatest of Biblical critics in the free, modern sense 
of the term. Being, of course, a Hebrew scholar, and 
thoroughly acquainted with Oriental modes of expres- 
sion, he readily perceived, even in the seventeenth 
century, that many scriptural stories which popular 
theology even now regards as miraculous were not 
so intended by those who wrote them. Mr. Arnold 



vi.] ESSAYS IX CBITICISM 89 

docs not deal with Spinoza's ethics. They go deeper 
than he cared to penetrate. But he gives an excellent 
summary of the Tractatus TheoHogico-Politicus, a treatise 
on Church and State. That grand old text, " Where 
the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," illustrates 
at once the politics and the theology of Spinoza. 
When Mr. Arnold wrote, the only English transla- 
tion of Spinoza, who composed in Latin, was almost 
incredibly bad. There is now a remarkably good one 
by the late Mr. Robert Elwes of Corpus Christi Col- 
lege, Oxford. 

Of Marcus Aurelius Mr. Arnold was a devotee. And 
indeed there are few nobler figures in history than this 
humble and pious man who, placed at the head of the 
Roman Empire when the Roman Empire was co-exten- 
sive with the civilised world, wrote his imperishable 
maxims of morality in the intervals of his Parian cam- 
paigns. It is true that he persecuted the Christians. 
Polycarp of Smyrna suffered under him. But, as Mr. 
Arnold says, he did it in ignorance. He died in 180, 
and never saw the Sermon on the Mount, or the Gospel 
of St. John. In his Meditations he never speaks of the 
Christians at all. He knew nothing about the teach- 
ing of Christ, which would have interested him so pro- 
foundly. Like Tacitus a century earlier, he regarded 
the Christians as an obscure sect of the Jews, morose 
fanatics, despisers of law and reason, enemies of the 
human race. Constantine in the next century dis- 
covered the truth, and became a Christian. But 
Marcus Aurelius was an infinitely better man than 
Constantine. In him we have Pagan morality at the 
highest point it ever attained, as in Petronius we have 
it at the lowest. No comparison between Christianity 



90 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. vi. 

and Paganism can be fair which rejects either one of 
these pictures or the other. The world, said Plato, 
would never be perfect until kings became philoso- 
phers, or philosophers became kings. The world is 
not likely ever to be perfect. But Marcus was a true 
philosopher on a throne. He was a real Stoic, yet with 
something strangely like Christian humility, which the 
Stoics altogether lacked. He " remains," says Mr. 
Arnold, "the especial friend and comforter of all 
clear-headed and scrupulous, yet pure-hearted and 
upward-striving men, in those ages most especially 
that walk by sight, not by faith, and yet have no open 
vision: he cannot give such souls, perhaps, all they 
yearn for, but he gives them much ; and what he gives 
them they can receive." Tin' ( treek of .Manns Aurelius 
is hard and crabbed — the Greek uf a Roman. Even 
scholars will be glad to read him in the accurate, if not 
very elegant, version of Mr. Long. He owed much, 
perhaps more than Mr. Arnold allows, to Epictetus, 
and he gratefully acknowledges his debt. Epictetus 
was a slave. At the opposite ends of the long ladder 
which made up Roman civilisation before Christianity 
became the faith of the Roman Empire, these two 
great men are inseparably connected by affinity of 
soul. "The idea of a polity," wrote the Emperor, 
"in which there is the same law for all, a polity 
administered with regard to equal rights and equal 
freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly govern- 
ment which respects most of all the freedom of the 
governed." This ideal was very imperfectly realised 
in the Roman State. But is it perfectly realised 
now ? 



CHAPTER VII 

THE END OF THE PROFESSORSHIP 

Mr. Arnold held the Professorship of Poetry at 
Oxford for ten years, from 1857 to 1867. He was 
twice elected for periods of five years each. But for 
him, as for the President of the United States, a third 
term was impossible. In 1867 he retired, and was 
succeeded by Sir Francis Doyle, author of that noble 
poem " The Return of the Guards," that justly popu- 
lar poem " The Private of the Buffs," and " The Don- 
caster St. Leger," the best description of a horse-race 
ever written in English verse. There were parts of 
Mr. Arnold's professorial duties, such as reading the 
Creweian Oration and examining for the Newdigate, 
which he heartily disliked. But, on the whole, the 
position gave him great pleasure, and he laid it down 
with sincere regret. He was anxious that Mr. Brown- 
ing should succeed him. Mr. Browning, however, was 
not an Oxford man, and though an honorary Master's 
Degree had been conferred upon him, the objection 
was held to be fatal. 

The Chair of Poetry is not an exhausting burden, 
and all the time he held it Mr. Arnold was zealously 
fulfilling his duty to the Department of Education. 
In 1865 he undertook another of those Continental 
investigations which he so thoroughly enjoyed. The 
Schools Inquiry Commissioners charged him with the 

91 



92 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

agreeable task — agreeable at least to him — of report- 
ing upon the system of teaching for the upper and 
middle classes which prevailed in France, Italy, 
Germany, and Switzerland. At the beginning of 
April he left London for Paris, where he began his 
work. In Paris he mei a citizen of the United States 
who might almost have walked out of Martin Chuzzletmt. 
Such are scarcely to be found now. "I have just 
seen," he writes to his mother on the 1st of May. •' an 
American, a great admirer of mine, who says that the 
three people he wanted to see in Europe were James 
Martineau, Herbert Spencer, and myself. His talk 
was not as our talk, but he was a good man." The 
last touch is characteristically and ironically urbane. 
At this time, seven years after "Merope," appeared 
"Atalanta in Calydon," which proved as popular as 
"Merope" was the revei It did not, however, 

satisfy Mr. Arnold, and in a critical letter to Professor 
Conington, dated the 17th of May, be thus speaks of 
it: — "The moderns will only have the antique on the 
condition of making it more beautiful (according to 
their own notions of beauty) than the antique — i.e. 
something wholly different." This is just criticism 
so far as it goes. " Atalanta " is not Greek. It is far 
too violent and impulsive to be Greek. But its mag- 
nificent verses, with their rush and ring, their surge 
and How, will always raise the spirits and charm the 
ear. Conington, a profoundly Learned man. but a 
pedant if ever there was one, was also, it seems, a 
great admirer of "Merope." He must have taken it 
with him to the grave, for it died long before its author. 
Mr. Arnold did not enjoy Italy so much as he might 
have done if he had known more about architecture 



vii.] THE END OF THE PROFESSORSHIP 93 

and painting. But he was a keen critic of national 
character, and being at Florence just after Florence 
had become, for a short time, the capital of Italy, he 
saw in a moment the weak point of the modern Italians. 
"They imitate the French too much," he wrote to 
his mother on the 24th of May. " It is good for us 
to attend to the French, they are so unlike us, but 
not good for the Italians, who are a sister nation." 
Luminous ideas of this kind light up the not very 
brilliant atmosphere of Mr. Arnold's correspondence, 
most of which he dashed off at odd moments, without 
having any special turn for the art. We could well 
have spared his comparison between the sham, gim- 
crack cathedral at Milan, which contains half a dozen 
more beautiful churches, and the great Duomo at 
Florence, with the cupola of Brunelleschi, unequalled 
in the world. But the fascination of Italy overcame 
Mr. Arnold at last, for on the 12th of September he 
wrote from Dresden to Mr. Slade, that "all time 
passed in touring anywhere in Western Europe, 
except Italy, seemed to him, with his present lights, 
time misspent," and it does not appear that he ever 
changed this opinion. 

Mr. Arnold was at Zurich in October 1865, when 
he heard of Lord Falmerston's death. Falmerston, 
though an aristocrat, as this word is generally under- 
stood, had none of the cosmopolitan culture which 
aristocracies are supposed to affect. He was as typical 
an Englishman as Bright or Cobden, far too typical 
for Mr. Arnold's taste. But with some allowance for 
personal prejudice, the following extract from Mr. 
Arnold's letter to his mother on Falmerston's career 
has truth as well as point in it. " I do not deny his 



94 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

popular personal qualities, but as to calling him a 
great Minister like Pitt, Walpole, and Peel, and 
talking of his death as a national calamity, why, 
taking his career from IS.'iO, when his importance 
really begins, to the present time, he found his 
country the first power in the world's estimation, 
and he leaves it the third; of this, no person with 
eyes to see and cars to hear, and opportunities for 
using them, can doubt; it may even be doubted 
whether, thanks to Bismarck's audacity, resolution, 
and success, Prussia too, as well as France and the 
United States, does not come before England at pres- 
ent in general respect." This contemporary judg- 
ment of a calm observer, whose political opinions 
were those of an independent Whig, may be com- 
mended to believers in the Palmerstonian legend. 
Matthew Arnold was the best of sons, and the allu- 
sions to his father in his letters to his mother, are 
really a more affectionate form of the feeling which 
prompted Frederick the Great's filial presents of 
gigantic grenadiers. Thus, on the 18th of November 
1865, after reading Mr. Stopford I'.rooke's excellent 
Life of Frederick Robertson, he writes: "It is a mis- 
take to put him witli papa, as the Spectator does: 
papa's greatness consists in his bringing sueh a 
torrent of freshness into English religion by placing 
history and polities in connection with it; Robertson's 
is a mere religous biography, but as a religious biogra- 
phy it is deeply interesting.'' .Mr. Arnold was, of 
course, before all things a man of letters, and of physi- 
cal Bcience he knew little or nothing, It is, therefore, 
an interesting proof of his mental width that he should 
have strongly recommended to his sister, Mrs. Forster, 



vii.] THE END OF THE PROFESSORSHIP 95 

science, especially botany, as better suited to cultivate 
perception in a child than grammar or mathematics. 
Perhaps he felt the want of scientific training himself. 
But he was intensely practical, and did his official 
work far more efficiently than many drudges who never 
wrote a verse. Just before Lord Russell's Govern- 
ment resigned in 18G6, he applied for a Commissioner- 
ship of Charities. It would, as he told his mother, 
have given him another three hundred a year, and an 
independent instead of a subordinate position. No 
man in England was better qualified for it. His views 
on charitable endowments were, as almost every one 
would now admit, thoroughly wise, enlightened, and 
sound. But the post was wanted for a lawyer, and 
lawyers, in this country, are made everything except 
judges. The appointment was Lord Russell's, and 
Lord Russell, as we know, was one of Mr. Arnold's 
earliest admirers. Mr. Gladstone, however, had para- 
mount influence, and it is said that he had already 
discovered the theological heterodoxy which after- 
wards became patent to the vulgar eye. It is almost 
inconceivable nowadays that such an argument should 
have weighed with a Minister filling a purely secular 
place. Mr. Arnold's failure was a disaster to the pub- 
lic service, and may almost be called a scandal. He 
was also unsuccessful in the following year, when 
he applied for the post of Librarian to the House of 
Commons. His application was supported by Mr. 
Disraeli, the leader of the House, and by many other 
distinguished persons. But Speaker Denison had 
determined to carry out one of those mysterious 
rearrangements in which the great functionaries of 
Parliament delight, and this particular plan involved 



96 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

the elevation of the Sub-Librarian, a thoroughly com- 
petent man. In this case Mr. Arnold's success would 
have been a public misfortune, for it would have 
withdrawn him from work of the greatest value, and 
laid him, for all practical purposes, on the shelf. 

Mr. Arnold's last lectures as Professor of Poetry- 
were devoted to the study of Celtic Literature. They 
were four in number, and were successively published 
after delivery in the Cornhill Magazine. In 1867, 
when Mr. Arnold retired from the Chair, they were 
reprinted in a small volume. Mr. George Smith, the 
great publisher, remarked that it was not exactly the 
sort of book which Paterfamilias would buy at a book- 
stall, and take down to his Jemima. I should be sorry 
to suggest that Mr. Smith did not get further than the 
title, to which his remark would apply. But no title 
was ever more misleading, and few books are easier to 
read. This is perhaps the most brilliantly audacious 
of all Mr. Arnold's performances. Mr. Gladstone 
wrote a book on the Bible without knowing a word 
of Hebrew. Matthew Arnold wrote, not indeed on 
Celtic literature, but on the study of it, in happy and 
contented ignorance of Gaelic, Erse, and Cyrnry. Only 
men of genius can do these things. Upon the real 
nature and value of Celtic literature these charming 
pages throw little, if any, light. The most solid port 
consists of notes contributed by Lord Strangford, a 
scientific philologist, and they are comically like a 
tutor's corrections of his pupil's exercise. Mr. Arnold 
tells us, with engaging frankness, how the idea of 
these lectures arose in his mind. He was staying at 
Llandudno, and got tired of gazing on the sea, espe- 
cially on the Liverpool steamboats. So he looked 



vii.] THE END OF THE PROFESSORSHIP 97 

inland, and studied the local traditions. He even 
attended an Eisteddfod, which he describes without 
enthusiasm. This national institution was attacked 
at that time by a great English newspaper in lan- 
guage of almost inconceivable brutality, which would 
be quite impossible now. Mr. Arnold, a true gentle- 
man in the highest meaning of the term, resented the 
insult, and the chief merit of his book is its delicately 
sympathetic handling of the Celtic character. Admit- 
ting that all Welshmen ought to learn English, he 
pleads for the preservation of the Welsh language, 
and this led him to the " Science of Origins," on which 
French scholars have bestowed so much research. He 
reminded the English people that they have a Celtic 
as well as a Norman element in them, and that to it 
they owed much of what was best in their poetry. His 
theory that rhyme is Celtic has been disputed, and cer- 
tainly mediaeval Latin is a more obvious source. The 
Celtic genius for style, for " melancholy and natural 
magic," is perhaps hardly borne out by the few frag- 
ments of translation which Mr. Arnold produces. 
But the notion of England as "a vast obscure Cymric 
basis with a vast visible Teutonic superstructure " is 
fascinating, if unknown and unknowable. Of happy 
touches this little volume is full. There we have 
Luther and Bunyan, whose connection with Celtic 
literature is remote, labelled as "Philistines of genius." 
There we have the Celt " always ready to react against 
the despotism of fact." Touches of human interest 
are not wanting. There is Owen Jones, who slowly 
and laboriously amassed a fortune that he might spend 
it all in printing and publishing every Welsh manu- 
script upon which he could lay his hands. There is 



98 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. vn. 

Eugene O'Curry, the learned and indefatigable student 
of his native Erse, who edited the Annals of tin I 
Misters. To him enters Thomas Moore, lazily con- 
templating a History of Ireland, and remarks pro- 
foundly that these Annals "could not have been 
written by fool8 3 or for any foolish purpose." What 
the Annals of tin Four Masters, and the Myvyrian 
ArchxBology, ami Lady Charlotte Gui \tab\nogion, 

are actually worth, we know no more when we have 
finished the book than we knew wheu we began it. 
But for British prejudice against other nationalities it 
i- a wholesome antidote. In this, as in so many other 

ects, Mr. Arnold was in advance of his age, unless, 

indeed, we prefei that he led his generation to 

a culture less partial and more urbane. The Bever- 

sor of mi. to which perhaps Mr. Arnold 

not wholly a Btranger, may well 1><- appeased by 
such a charming phrase a- " bellettristic trifler," which 
this amateur of Celtic applies to himself. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NEW POEMS 

The publication of Mr. Arnold's New Poems in 1867, 
though directly suggested by Mr. Browning, who 
wished to see " Empedocles on Etna" restored to its 
original shape, was, as he himself said, a labour of 
love. Hf has expressed in familiar lines the opinion 
thai poetry which gave no pleasure to the writer will 
give no pleasure to the world. This volume had an 
immediate and a permanent success. It bore for 
motto, besides the sentiment to which reference has 
already been made, the pretty quatrain, which age 
cannot wither — 

'• Though the Muse be gone away, 
Tin mgh she move not earth to-day, 
Souls, erewhile who caught her word, 
All ! still harp on what they heard." 

With these poems the poetical career of Matthew 
Arnold may be said to close. To the end of his life 
he wrote occasional verses. But they were few in 
number, and they neither, with the exception of 
'• Westminster Abbey," added to his fame nor de- 
tracted from it. His outward circumstances harmon- 
ised with this inward change. Mr. Arnold ceased to 
be Professor of Poetry. He remained an Inspector of 
Schools. But his poetical fame w r as established, and 
no living English poet except Tennyson was incon- 
• L.ofC. " 



100 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

testably his superior. The greatest poem in the 
volume, some think the greatest he ever wrote, is 
" Thyrsis," a monody, or elegy, on his friend Arthur 
Clough, who had died, as we have seen, at Florence in 
1861. Mr. Swinburne, a warm admirer of Matthew 
Arnold, has expressed a too contemptuous estimate of 
Clough's poetical powers. His English hexameters and 
pentameters are doggerel, though the ideas which they 
express are often subtle. But some of his shorter pieces, 
such as "Say not the straggle nought availeth," and 
" As ships at eve becalmed they lay,"have retained their 
hold upon the minds and hearts of men. Clough is not 
likely ever to become a mere name, like the Reverend 
Mr. King. That "Thyrsis" is inferior to " Lycidas" 
hardly requires stating. All English dirges, except 
the dirge in u Cymbeline," are. But in truth the 
comparison is fruitless, for there is no resemblance. 
Mr. Arnold's model was not Milton, but Theocritus, 
and " Thyrsis " is thoroughly Theocritean in sentiment. 
The opening stanza strikes the keynote, and is, I 
think, unsurpassed throughout the poem. It is 
penetrated, like most of the stanzas which succeed it, 
with the spirit of the place, and is redolent of the 
beautiful country round Oxford — 

•• II<>w changed is here each Bpol man makes or fills I 

In the two Hinkseya nothing keeps the same ; 
The village street its haunted mansion lacks, 

And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name, 
And from the roof the twisted chimney-stacks ; — 

Are ye too changed, ye hills ? 
See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men 

To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays 1 

Here came I often, often, in old days, 
Thyrsis and I ; we still had Thyrsis then." 



Tin.] THE NEW POEMS 101 

" Thyrsis " is avowedly a sequel to " The Scholar 
Gipsy," with which it should always be read. I do 
not feel able to decide between their relative merits. 
Even Oxford has inspired no nobler verse. 

But though " Thyrsis " was the principal of the New 
Poems, and the best example of Mr. Arnold's matured 
powers, there are many others at once excellent and 
characteristic. " Saint Brandan " is a picturesque 
embodiment of a strange mediaeval legend touching 
Judas Iscariot, who is supposed to be released from 
Hell for a few hours every Christmas because he had 
done in his life a single act of charity. " Calais 
Sands " and " Dover Beach " strike a higher note. 
•• Calais Sands" is cold compared with the love-poems 
in " Switzerland." But it is graceful, and charming, 
and everything except real. " Dover Beach " is very 
different, and much deeper. Profoundly melancholy 
in tone, it expresses the peculiar turn of Mr. Arnold's 
mind, at once religious and sceptical, philosophical 
and emotional, better than his formal treatises on 
philosophy and religion. The second part of it 
deserves to be quoted at length, both on this account 
and for its literary beauty — 

" The Sea of Faith 
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd ; 
But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 
Retreating to the breath 
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world. 

" Ah, love, let us be true 
To one another ! for the world, which seems 



102 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

To lie before us like a land of dreams, 

So various, so beautiful, so new, 

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 

And we are here as on a darkling plain 

Swept with confused alarm of struggle and fight, 

"Where ignorant armies clash by night ! " 

" The Last Word " describes the plight of a hopeless 
and exhausted Btruggler against a Philistine world too 
strong for him. It is one of Mr. Arnold's best known 

] ms, and need not be reprinted here. The last 

stan/a contains a curious, and rather awkward, am- 
biguity. Thus it runs: — 

" Charge once more, then, and be dumb I 
Let the victors, when they come, 
When the forta of folly fall. 

Find thy body by the wall.'' 

The natural meaning of these words would be that the 
person addressed had been engaged in defending 

the forts of folly, which, it need hardly be said, is 
the precise opposite of what Mr. Arnold intended. 
" Bacchanalia, <>r The New Age."" is perhaps the most 
fanciful among all Matthew Arnold's poems, and it is 
certainly one of the mosl beautiful. It must be read 
as a whole, for it illustrates the connection of the past 
with the present in the mind of a poet. But the 
following lines would be missed from any estimate or 
criticism of Matthew Arnold. The constant repetition 
of a single epithet shows where Mr. Arnold's danger 
lay, both in prose and verse. In this case, however, 
the arrangement is so skilful that the trick, for it must 
be called a trick, justifies itself — 



viii.] THE NEW POEMS 103 

"The epoch ends, the world is still. 
The age has talk'd and work'd its fill — 
The famous orators have shone, 
The famous poets sung and gone. 
The famous men of war have fought, 
The famous speculators thought, 
The famous players, sculptors wrought, 
The famous painters fill'd their wall, 
The famous critics judg'd it all. 
The combatants are parted now, 
Unhung the spear, unbent the bow, 
The puissant crown' d, the weak laid low ! " 

" Rugby Chapel," written so far back as 1857, and 
"Heine's Grave," are Mr. Arnold's most successful 
efforts in lyrical metre without rhyme. That defect is 
to my mind, or rather to my ear, a fatal one. But if 
ever Mr. Arnold for a time appears to surmount it, these 
are the poems where his apparent success is achieved. 
In " Rugby Chapel " he praises his father as one of 
those who were not content with saving their own 
souls, but sought to bring others with them — 

" Then, in such hour of need 
Of your fainting, dispirited race, 
Ye, like angels, appear, 
Radiant with ardour divine. 
Beacons of hope, ye appear ! 
Languor is not in your heart, 
"Weakness is not in your word, 
Weariness not on your brow." 

"Heine's Grave" is a painfully morbid poem on a 
supremely dismal subject. It contains some grotesque 
instances of metrical eccentricity. Such a line as 

"Paris drawing-rooms and lamps" 



104 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

is beyond all criticism, out of the pale. But the 
famous description of England, or the British Empire, 
is as good as anything of the kind can be : — 

11 Yes, we arraign her ! but she, 
The weary Titan ! with deaf 

Ears, and Liboor-dimm'd i 

\l- warding neither to right, 

Nor left, goes passively by, 

Staggering <>n to her goal ; 

B bring "ii shoulders immense, 

Atlantean, the Load, 

W U-nigh not to be borne, 

Of the too vast orb of her fate" 

Tf the tiling is to be done at all, thai is how one should 
do it. 

The "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," though 
included in this volume, appeared in Fra ' Magazine 
for April 1855. They are very stately and solemn 
stanzas. Every one knows the famous lines about 
Byron, and the •• pageant of his bleeding heart." 1 
familiar, but I think finer, is the author's own attitude 
of wistful yearning reverence for the comfort of a creed 
he canuot hold — 

"Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
The other powerless to be bi>rn, 
With nowhere yel to rest my head, 

Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. 

Their faith, my tears, the world deride — 

I come to shod them at your side. 

Oh, hide me in your gloom ]>rofound, 

Ye solemn seats of holy pain ! 

Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round, 

Till I possess my soul again ; 



vih.] THE NEW POEMS 105 

Till free my thoughts before me roll, 
Not chafed by hourly false control !■" 

With these pathetic lines we may take our leave 
for the present of Mr. Arnold as a poet. He had 
other work to do, and from duty he never shrank. 
From this time forth the poetic stream ran thin, 
though it never quite ran out. 



CHAPTER IX 

EDUCATION 

KnucATiox is proverbially a dull subject. But in 
Mr. Arnold's case it cannot be omitted, and in bis 
hands it was never dull, lie was an Inspector of 
Schools for five-and-thirty years, resigning his post only 
two years before his death. The Department wisely 
and properly treated him with great indulgence. He 
always had the mosl interesting work that there was 
to do. But his life was a laborious one. He was more 
than willing to spend and be spent for the intellec- 
tual improvement of his countrymen. When he was 
first appointed an Inspector there existed a sort of 
agreement between Church and State. The Catholic 
Bchools were Inspected by Catholics; schools belonging 
to the Church of England were officially visited by 
jymen. Being neither a clergyman nor a Catholic, 
Mr. Arnold was assigned to Protestant schools not 

connected with the Church of England, or, in other 
words, to the schools of the Dissenters. He did not 
get 011 with Dissenters, and his irritation, as we shall 
see, found vent in his writings. Alter 1870, when 
compulsory education began, and denominational in- 
spection was abandoned. Mr. Arnold confined himself 
to the borough of Westminster, where for a long time 
there was only one Board school. He was the idol of 

106 



chap, ix.] EDUCATION 107 

the children, for he petted them and treated them with 
the easy condescension which was his charm. Upon the 
teachers his influence was still more important. " In- 
directly," says Sir Joshua Fitch, " his fine taste, his 
gracious and kindly manner, his honest and gen- 
erous recognition of any new form of excellence 
which he observed, all tended to raise the aims and 
the tone of the teachers with whom he came in contact, 
and to encourage in them self-respect, and respect for 
their work." His official reports were most inter- 
esting and instructive. He had a natural insight into 
the real merits and defects of public teaching. He 
saw things as they were. " The typical mental defect 
of our school children," he said, "is their almost 
incredible scantiness of vocabulary." This is a national 
deficiency; and no one who has sat, for howsoever 
short a time, in Parliament, can believe that it is 
peculiar to children. Mr. Arnold held no narrow or 
rigid view of the difference between primary and 
secondary education. He thought that the rudi- 
ments of French and Latin might well be taught in 
elementary schools. He was also an advocate for 
teaching in them the beginnings of natural science, or 
what Huxley used to call "Physiography." "The 
excuse," as he put it characteristically, « for putting 
most of these matters into our programme is that 
we are all coming to be agreed that an entire igno- 
rance of the system of nature is as grave a defect in 
our children's education as not to know that there 
ever was such a person as Charles the First." 

In 1868 appeared Mr. Arnold's Report upon Schools 
and Universities on the Continent. It deals with edu- 
cation in France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. 



108 MATTHEW ARNOLD [cHxr. 

But its practical interest is restricted to France and 
Germany. For the Swiss system was almost identical 
with the German, and in Italy at that time national 
education was in its infancy. 

French institutions and French habits of thought 
were always thoroughly congenial to Mr. Arnold. His 
lucid, methodical mind was attracted by the thorough- 
ness of French logic, and he was more especially 
fascinated by the orderly sequence with which the 
pupil ascended from the primary school to the uni- 
ity. Himself the product of reformed Rugby, and 
of unreformed Oxford, a child of the old learning and 
the new spirit, he was appalled by the anomalous con- 
dition of English universities, and by the chaos of 
intermediate teaching in England. With the admir- 
able schools of Scotland he had nothing to do. The 
secondary schools of France, all under the Minister 
of Education, he described with hearty though not 
uncritical praise. The University of Paris, the great 
seat of learning in the Middle Ages, moved him to 
unwonted enthusiasm. He envied the Professors who 
were only teachers, and declared that he would rather 
have their moderate salary with abundant leisure than 
be a Master in one of our public schools, receiving 
twice their pay. but having no time to himself. The 
Ecole Normale, the training college for French teach- 
ers, he pronounced to be excellent. No one in Eng- 
land was taught to teach, whereas in France the State 
made itself directly responsible for all kinds of edu- 
cation, and the most stringent tests were applied to 
teachers. Then, again, the French language in France, 
unlike the English language in England, was made 
the subject of thorough and serious study. Even in 



«.] EDUCATION 109 

learning the classics the development of the mother 
tongue, and its resources, was the first consideration 
impressed upon the mind. Examinations, Mr. Arnold 
held, were better understood in France than here. 
The French did not attempt to examine boys before 
they were fifteen, and he held very strongly the 
opinion that before that age intellectual pressure 
was dangerous. Between fifteen and twenty-five he 
thought that the mind could hardly be overworked. 
Tested by results, he showed that the French schools 
were far more successful than our own. When he 
wrote, there were in the public schools of England 
fifteen thousand boys. In the public schools of 
France there were sixty-six thousand. It may, how- 
ever be doubted whether the standard of comparison 
was a fair one. The French lyceums provided for a 
class which in England was even more content than it 
is now with private or " adventure " schools. 

On one point, and that certainly not the least impor- 
tant, Mr. Arnold had to confess that French boarding- 
schools were most unsatisfactory. He gave the worst 
possible account of the ushers, the maitres cVetudes. 
They were drudges, they wore not required to teach, 
and they were miserably underpaid. Their duty was 
to protect the morals of the boys, but many of them 
were gravely suspected of doing exactly the opposite. 
No scientific perfection of teaching can make up for 
such an evil as this. After all, there is something to 
be said for the freedom and honour of Eton and Har- 
row, of Rugby and Winchester. There are cruelty 
and vice in all schools. But constant supervision and 
absolute distrust encourage more mischief than they 
prevent. In French schools the hours of work are 



110 MATTHEW ARNOLD [cii.vr. 

longer, and the means of recreation scantier, than 
English boys would endure. 

Mr. Arnold's Reports on French, Swiss, and Italian 
Education were never republished. To his Report 
on the Education of Germany he must himself have 
attached more value, for he brought it out again in 
1874, and a third time in 188L\ lVrhaps he considered 
the example of a Teutonic race more likely to be con- 
tagious. The cheapness of German education struck 
him forcibly, and though prices had nearly doubled 
before the reappearance of his Report, he maintained 
that the relative proportion between the two countries 
was the Bame. This could not be said now, but there 
is still much room fur economy in the public schools 
and universities of England. German schools, as 
Mr. Arnold found them, were denominational, with a 
conscience clause, and attendance at them was com- 
pulsory for all classes. In Prussia, which Mr. Arnold 
took as typical of Germany, the Government, as in 
France, set up an educational ladder which a promis- 
ing boy could mount from the bottom rung to the top. 
Adepts in education were consulted by the State, as 
they were not in England. This was a point which 
Mr. Arnold put very Btrongly, and he urged it with 
some exaggeration. It is not quite true that expert 
opinion has been rejected by the Education Depart- 
ment, now the Board of Education. Mr. Arnold's own 
Reports, for instance, were very carefully considered 
by his official superiors, and of Education Com missions 
there has been no end. The difficulties in carrying out 
their recommendations have been Parliamentary, and 
the great difficulty of all has been the religious one. 
In Germany, as in France, the mother tongue was 



ix.] EDUCATION 111 

carefully taught, and in the RealscJude, intended to 
prepare boys for business, English was obligatory, as 
well as French. In England the teaching of foreign 
languages has made much progress since Mr. Arnold's 
day, but the study of English is confined to elementary 
schools. The public, or national, schools of Prussia 
are not boarding-schools, and the boys are, or were, 
for the most part taken in by private families. The 
German universities are the only avenue to the learned 
professions, and, as is well known, a German professor, 
though receiving, according to our standard, a small 
salary, holds a position of great dignity. Admittance 
to a German university is obtained only by examination, 
and the test is a severe one. For the teachers there is 
a very stringent examination indeed. They have to 
graduate in " paedagogic " before they reach the facultas 
docendi. Mr. Arnold was conscious that to most Eng- 
lishmen all this would seem mere pedantry. No man 
was less of a pedant than he. But he held that his 
countrymen's ideas of education were hopelessly un- 
scientific, and he did his best to correct them. He 
believed in the State as an instrument of education, 
as we have all come to believe in it now, and the official 
position of German universities was congenial to him. 
At the same time, the German teachers were not, as 
the French were, liable to dismissal by the Govern- 
ment. Mr. Arnold may fairly be said to have fallen 
in love with the German system of education. The 
French universities, he said, wanted liberty ; the Eng- 
lish universities wanted science ; the German universi- 
ties had both. 

In conclusion, Mr. Arnold recommended that Greek 
and Latin should be studied in England more after the 



112 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. ix. 

fashion of modern languages. The German boys he 
found inferior to the English in composition, where 
English scholarship has always been peculiarly strong. 
But the making of Latin verses is not, even in this 
country, so favourite a pursuit as it was fifty or a 
hundred years ago, and the scientific study of com- 
parative philology has seriously modified classical edu- 
cation. Our secondary schools, to whose badness Mr. 
Arnold traced an undue distinction between classes in 
England, are almost as bad as ever. But some of his 
proposals have been carried out. He was the real 
lather of university extension, and he recommended 
that the University of London should be made a 
teaching institution, as it was twelve years after his 
death. Of all educational reformers in the last cen- 
tury, not excepting his father, Mr. Arnold was the 
most enlightened, the most far-sighted, and the most 
fair-minded. 



CHAPTER X 

mr. Arnold's philosophy 

Matthew Arnold always disclaimed the epithet 
Philosopher, just as he repudiated the title of Pro- 
fessor. But he had a philosophy of his own, which 
was perhaps, like Cicero's, rather Academic than Stoic 
or Epicurean. lie was always much interested in 
the history of religion, and he took great delight in 
Dent sell's famous essay on the Talmud, which appeared 
in the Quarterly H> view for October 1807. He wrote 
about it to Lady de Rothschild on the 4th of November 
in a letter which well deserves to be quoted, because 
it contains the germ of a theory that afterwards 
coloured almost the whole of his writings. What he 
liked best himself, he said, in the article, were " the 
long extracts from the Talmud itself," which gave him 
"huge satisfaction." With the Christian character of 
later Judaism he was already well acquainted. " It is 
curious," he added, " that, though Indo-European, the 
English people is so constituted and trained that there 
is a thousand times more chance of bringing it to a 
more philosophical conception of religion than its 
present conception of Christianity as something utterly 
unique, isolated, and self-subsistent, through Judaism 
and its phenomena, than through Hellenism and its 
phenomena." Mr. Arnold's interest in such matters, 
! 113 



114 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

however, did not take his mind off politics, upon which 
he always kept a very keen eye. His theory of the 
Clerkenwell explosion, in December L867, was at L< 
original He traced it to the immunity of the Hyde 
Park rioters in 1866. " You cannot," he wrote to his 
mother on the 1 1th of December, "yen cannot have one 
measure for Fenian rioting and another for English 
rioting, merely because the design of Fenian rioting is 
more subversive and desperate. What the State lias 
to do is to put down all rioting with a Btrong hand, or 
it is sure to drift into troubles." It is true, but not 
the whole truth, sir Robert Peel once said that 
everybody told him he oughl to be firm, as if he did not 

know that, and as if the whole art of statesmanship eon- 
sifted in firmness. The rioters of L866 mighl say that 
they carried the Reform Act of L867, and the rioters 
of L867 might say that they d Wished the Irish 

church in 1869. Butj as a matter of fact, the rioters of 
L867 were dangerous, and the rioters of 1866 were not. 
In the same letter. Mr. Arnold mentions a tribute 

from a teacher of which he felt justly proud. He 
'•was alw;; tttle and patient with the children." 

No inspector of schools has <-\ er been more universally 

beloved, though some, it lnuM D6 confessed, have taken 

their duties in a more serious spirit. At the beginning 
of 1868 he was amused and pleased at an invitation 
from the pro] - of the Daily Telegraph to write 

them a notice of Blake the artist, and to "name his 
own price." « I senl a civil refusal," he characteristi- 
cally remarks; "but, you may depend upon it, Lord 
Lytton was right in Baying that it is no inconsiderable 
advantage to you that all the writing world have a 
kind of weakness for you even at the time they are 



x.] ME. ARNOLD'S PHILOSOPHY 115 

attacking you." Early this year, Mr. Arnold moved 
from London to Harrow for the better education of his 
children. At Harrow, on the 23rd of November, his 
eldest son, who had always been an invalid, died, and 
on the next day Mr. George Russell found the father 
seeking consolation from the pages of his favourite 
Marcus Aurelius. His feeling for religion was never 
eon lined to Christianity. 

Early in 1867 Messrs. Smith and Elder — that is to 
Bay, Mr. Arnold's valued friend of a lifetime, Mr. 
George Smith — published Culture and Anarchy, which 
contains the writer's philosophical system, so far as he 
had one. Systematic thought he half ironically dis- 
claimed. But he meant even by the title of his book 
to convey that lawlessness was the result of not de- 
ferring to the authority of cultivated persons. There 
was point in the sarcasm of the Nonconformist critic 
who spoke of Mr. Arnold's belief in the well-known 
]. reference of the Almighty for University men. It is, 
however, undeniably true that whereas in France and 
Germany people have too little regard for individual 
inedom, in England adepts are slighted, knowledge 
undervalued, and the claim of every man to do as 
he pleases elevated from a legal doctrine into a moral 
ideal. There is some truth, though also some exaggera- 
tion, in the following passage : il While on the Continent 
the idea prevails that it is the business of the heads 
and representatives of the nation, by virtue of their 
superior means, power, and information, to set an 
exam [>le and to provide suggestions of right reason, 
among us the idea is that the business of the heads 
and representatives of the nation is to do nothing of 
the kind, but applaud the natural taste for the bathos 



116 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

showing itself vigorously in any part of the community, 
and to encourage its works" {Culture and Anarchy, 
second edition, p. 116). That is what Mr. Arnold 
would himself have called a heightened and telling way 
of putting it. But he was attacking a real error, of 
which practical politics afford numerous examples. It 
is difficult to be personal without being offensive. If I 
could avoid offence by taking two instances from the 
same party. I should say that Mr. Chamberlain repre- 
sented the theory assailed by Mr. Arnold (for which 
there is much to be said), and Mr. Balfour the theory 
he would have substituted for it. 

Cultui . Mi'. Arnold in his Preface (page X.), 18 

"a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting 

to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the 
best which has hem thought and said in the world." 

In thisres] t no man ever practised what he preached 

more thoroughly than Matthew Arnold. To me a 
phrase widely current of late, he was "the fine flower 
of Oxford culture," and there lias seldom been a 
more delicate, or a more delightful specimen. Y< • 

lie belonged, as he often said, to the middle class, whom 
he called Phil . implying that culture was what 

they lacked. Philistinism La a convenient and expres- 
sive term. Bui it describes a frame of mind, not a class. 
Mr. Arnold, as I have said before, used the word 
" as if it were synonymous with caste, which in 
English society does not Common occupations, 

common professions, above all, intermarriage, make it 
impossible. There is nothing, excepl his title, to dis- 
tinguish a lord from a commoner. The richtsl people 
are not the best educated, nor the worst. Mr. Arnold 
called "the aristocracy." which he would have been 



x.] MR. ARNOLD'S PHILOSOPHY 117 

puzzled to define, barbarians, beeause they cared more 
for field sports than for the improvement of their minds. 
Some of them do, some of them do not. There is no 
rule. The love of sport pervades the working classes 
as well as the House of Lords. Mr. Arnold's name for 
the proletariate was a confession of failure. He 
simply called them " the populace," which is no more 
descriptive than Mr. Bright' a " residuum." The English 
people do not live in classes, they live as individuals, 
and in sets. Culture and ignorance, simplicity and 
vulgarity, high and low ideals, are pretty equally 
divided among all sections of the community. Mr. 
Arnold refers (at page xviii. of his Preface) to the 
"undesirable provincialism of the English Puritans 
and Protestant Nonconformists." If by provincialism 
(a rather "provincial" word) is meant narrowness of 
view, it might apply to the school of Mr. Spurgeon, 
but it certainly would not apply to the school of Dr. 
Martineau. It would be as reasonable to lump Dr. 
Creighton with Dr. Ryle because both were Anglican 
Bishops. 

In Culture ami Anarchy, Mr. Arnold preaches his 
favourite doctrine of "sweetness and light." The 
phrase, as he acknowledged, is Swift's. Swift used it 
of the bees, because they make honey and wax. Mr. 
Arnold transferred it to the operation of culture, which 
would, if it could, " make reason and the will of God 
prevail." He contrasted it with the motto of the 
Nonconformist newspaper : " The Dissidence of Dissent 
and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion." It 
is easy to be sarcastic upon this pugnacious device, 
and to quote St. Peter's " Be of one mind " ; but 
without Protestantism, which is a form of Dissent, 



118 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

Mr. Arnold's books would have been condemned and 
suppressed. The religious freedom in which he so 
lavishly indulged, was secured for him by the objects 
of his constant gib 9. Mr. Arnold's official connection 
with Oxford had now ceased, but her hold upon his 
allegiance was undiminished. " We have not won our 
political battles." he . at page 32, u we have not 
carried our main points, we have not stopped our 
adversaries' advance, we have not marched victoriously 
with the modern world; but we have told silently 
upon the mind of the country, we have prepared 
currents of feeling which sap our adversaries' position 
when it seems gained, we have kept up onr own 
communications with the future.*' Who are "we"? 
Mr. Arnold means Oxford men, and he refers to the 
Oxford Movement. But Oxford would have con- 
demned Newman's most famous Tract if two High 
Church proctors had not interfered, and the same 
Oxford actually degraded Dr. Ward Eor writing a High 
Church book. The intellectual, as distinguished from 
the political. Liberalism of Oxford dates from the 

admissi Nonconformists. It is only fair to add, 

before leaving this part of the subject, that Mr. Arnold 

himself acknowledges his tripartite division of society 
not to be mutually exclusive. •■ An English barbarian 
who examines himself," he says, on page 96, "will in 
general find himself to be no1 so entirely a barbarian, 
but that he has in him also something of the Philistine, 
and even something of the Populace as well. Ami the 
same with Englishmen of the other two class 
Just so. But, then, what is the value of the classifica- 
tion? One is reminded of Thurlow's famous remark 
about Kenyon and Buller. A rule with too many 
exceptions ceases to be a rule at all. 



x.] MR. ARNOLD'S PHILOSOPHY 119 

" No man," says Mr. Arnold, at page 163, " no man 
who knows nothing else knows even his Bible." The 
sentiment is familiar; and Mr. Kudyard Kipling has 
performed a variation upon it in his celebrated, but 
fallacious, inquiry, "What can they know of England 
who only England know ? " The answer to Mr. Kipling 
is — " Everything, if they read the newspapers." Mr. 
Arnold was aiming at M v. Spurgeon, but he hit Bunyan 
without meaning it. If stupid people would read the 
Bible less, and clever people would read it more, the 
world would be much improved. The objects of Mr. 
Arnold's just scorn were not really men who confined 
themselves to the Bible, but those who tried to serve 
God and Mammon. Such, for example, was a late 
Chairman of the Great Western Railway, who quoted 
to the workmen at Swindon the beautiful sentence 
uttered to him every morning by his mother when he 
went to work on the line. " Ever remember, my dear 
Dan,*' said the good lady, "that you should look for- 
ward to being some day manager i »f that concern." The 
words of the Gospel were fulfilled in Dan. He had 
his reward. He did become manager of that not very 
well-managed concern. He was outwardly more for- 
tunate than the secretary of the insurance company 
who committed suicide because he "laboured under 
the apprehension that he would come to poverty, and 
that he was eternally lost." Against the vulgar degra- 
dation of religion, as unchristian as it is gloomy and 
sordid, implied in these awful words, Matthew Ar- 
nold set his face, and so far he followed the teach- 
ing of Christ. 

Mr. Arnold had now a European reputation as a man 
of letters, and at the beginning of 1869 the Italian 



120 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

Government proposed to him that Prince Thomas of 
Savoy, the Duke of Genoa, who a year afterwards 
refused the crown of Spain, should live with the 
Arnolds at Harrow -while he attended the school. 
The proposal would not have been attractive to every 
one, but it suited Mr. Arnold very well He was socia- 
ble in his tastes, and cosmopolitan in his sympathies. 
Be had travelled a good deal on the Continent, and 
knew foreign Lao a well. Mrs. Arnold had no 

objection, and she, after all, ;is he remarked to his 

mother, was the person most concerned. The arrange- 
ment answered perfectly, and Mr. Arnold, who 1< 
young people, became very fond of the prince. The 
boy wasa Etonian Catholic, but there seems to have 
hern no apprehension thai Mr. Arnold would Bubverl 

faith; and when he left Harrow in 1871, his host 

received from Victor Emmanuel "the Order of Com- 
mander of the Crown of Italy.*' Mr. Arnold's failure in 
getting a Commit rship under his brother-in-law's 

Endowed Schools' Act he attributed, no doubt correctly, 
to Mr. ( rladstone ; but the disappointment was not very 

.. and when the Conservatives came into po 
live yes erward8, they put a summary end to the 

Commission. < >n the other hand, he thoroughly appre- 
ciated the honorary degree conferred upon him by his 
own University at the Commemoration of L870. The 

lisl was made out by the in-w Chancellor. Lord Salis- 
bury, who had sue, 'ceded Lord Derby the year before, 
and none of the names chosen did more credit to his 
choice than Mr. Arnold',. He was presented to Lord 
Salisbury by his friend Mr. Bryce, the grofessor of 
Civil Law, and received by graduates as well as under- 
graduates with a heartiness which greatly pleased him. 



x.] MR. ARNOLD'S PHILOSOPHY 121 

This year 1870 may be assigned as the date of 
Matthew Arnold's open breach with the religious, or 
at least the orthodox, world. The later stages of that 
quarrel, not in all respects creditable to either side, 
will be traced in the next chapter, which will be 
devoted to Mr. Arnold's theology. St. Paid and 
Protestantism, with an Essay on Puritanism in the 
Church of England, was reprinted, like Culture and 
Anarchy, from the Coruhill Magazine. It is rather 
philosophical than theological, and carries a step 
further the principles laid down in Culture and 
Anarchy. Its object was twofold. The author de- 
sired to contrast Hebraism, the philosophy of morals, 
with Hellenism, the philosophy of thought. He 
sought also to prove that Evangelical Puritanism, 
which grounded itself upon the doctrines of St. Paul, 
had misunderstood and perverted the teaching of the 
apostle. Of Evangelical Puritanism the Nonconformists 
were the chief representatives, and therefore they come 
in for a peculiar share of Mr. Arnold's attention; but 
he deals also with the Kvangclical party in the Church 
of England, then stronger, at least among the clergy, 
than it is now. Translating, or paraphrasing, the 
Greek word 'EwuiKeui by " sweet reasonableness/' he 
urged that that was the distinguishing characteristic 
which St. Paul had derived from the teaching of his 
Master. Setting this against the spirit of contentious- 
ness which, in his opinion, Dissent developed, he 
proceeded to argue in favour of unity, of one Church. 
So far his position was thoroughly agreeable to the 
Anglican Establishment. But it soon appeared that 
the new and universal Church was to be purged of all 
dogma. God was no longer to be, as the Calvinists 



122 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

made Him, "a magnified aud non-natural man," but 
" that stream of tendency by which all things strive to 
fulfil the law of their being." This is Pantheism, pure 
and simple. Now Pantheism, though a profoundly 
religious creed, is not regarded with favour by orthodox 
Protestants, or, for that matter, by orthodox Catholics. 
I remember that, when I was at Oxford, a Hampton 
Lecturer incurred much ridicule by this passionate 
adjuration from the pulpit : " I beseech you, brethren/' 
said he, "by the mercies of Christ, that you hold fast 
to the integrity of your anthropomorphism. 1 ' It was 
enough to make Deao Manse! turn in his grave. But, 
as Mr. Goldwin Smith, in a brilliant though now for- 
gotteil essay, and Mr. Mill, in his examination of Sir 
William Hamilton's Philosophy, reminded Mr. Manse], 

a Deity of whom no human or natural qualities can 
be predicated is a mere abstraction, and for practical 

purposes might as well nol exist. 

What, then, according to Mr. Arnold, was St. Paul's 
real doct rim- '.' It will be found on page 42 of the 
second edition. "This man, whom Calvin and Luther 
and their follower- have shut up into the two scholas- 
tic doctrines of election and justification, would have 
said, could W6 hear him, just, what he said about cir- 
cumcision and uncircumcision in his own day : - Elec- 
tion is nothing, and justification is nothing, but the 
keeping of the commandments of God.'" It may l>e 
so. What has hern said generally of the Bible is true 
especially of St. Paul, Everybody goes to the Pauline 
Epistles for his own doctrines, and everybody finds 

them. They are far more difficult to understand than 
Plato or Aristotle, and yet preachers wholly innocent 
of hermeneutics will expound them with the most 



x.] MR. ARNOLD'S PHILOSOPHY 123 

touching confidence. Mr. Arnold had a short way of 
eliminating from St. Paul what he did not like, such 
as " the harsh and unedifying image of the clay and 
the potter." St. Paul " was led into difficulty by the 
tendency, which we have already noticed as marking 
his real imperfection both as a thinker and as a writer 
— the tendency to Judaise " (page 97). It is hardly 
strange that St. Paul should have Judaised. He was 
a Jew, a Pharisee, familiar not merely with the law 
and the prophets, but also with the Rabbinical tradi- 
tions, long before he heard of Christ. Conversion 
changes, or ought to change, a man's purpose and mode 
of life. It does not affect the habits of his mind. St. 
Paul wished to reconcile Christianity with Judaism, 
not to supersede one by the other. His " tendency to 
Judaise " is part of his system. Take it away, and he 
ceases to be St. Paul. 

In the essay on Puritanism and the Church of 
England Mr. Arnold points out (page 129), "that the 
High Church divines of the seventeenth century were 
Arininian, that the Church of England was the strong- 
hold of Arminianism, and that Arminianism is an 
effort of man's practical good sense to get rid of what 
is shocking to it in Calvinism." And he traces the 
existence of Nonconformity mainly to the fact that 
the Church would not " put the Calvinistic doctrines 
more distinctly into her formularies." This is more 
than doubtful history. The persecuting policy of 
Laud, and the Act of Uniformity passed when that 
most Christian king, Charles the Second, was restored 
to the throne, were the chief causes of Protestant 
Dissent. Mr. Arnold was fond of Butler, and quoted 
him almost as often as he quoted the Vulgate. " ' The 



124 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chai>. 

Bible,' said the great bishop, • contains many truths 
as yet undiscovered,' and in so saying he passed sen- 
tence on every creed and council " (page 151). That 
is an admirable application of a profound truth, whether 
Butler would himself have made it or not. For if it 
be true, as Cardinal Newman says, that we "cannot 
halve the gospel of God's grace/ 4 so neither can we 
limit it. Securus judical orbis terrarv/m. These words 
of St. Augustine convinced Newman that the Church 
of Rome must be in the right. For that purpose Mr. 
Arnold, of course, rejects them. Bat he adopts them 
in support of his own theory that religion implies 
unity. For my part, I think that the words are 
much nearer the truth if < d as a classical 

Roman would have construed them. When Horace 
wrote that he was "quid Tiridaten ten-eat unice 

securus." he did not menu that he had infallible 
knowledge of what frightened Tiridates. He meant 
that he did not care, which is only too true of the 
world and theology. Mr. Arnold defends the church 
of England from the charge of " not knowing her own 
mind," or, rather, he denies that it is a charge, and 
claims it LS as B merit. He pleads with eloquence and 

sincerity that doctrinal differences, however funda- 
mental, are no ground for separation, and that Luther 

did I for any such reason, but because the 

Church of Rome was immoral, which was a true 
ground, and the only true one. This idea of a uni- 
-al Church, with departure from iniquity for its 
first principle, is a very noble one. The invisible tie 
which unites all good men is in some sort a fulfilment 
of it. Fully i i on earth it is never likely to be. 

A Mr. Jowett so beautifully says of Plato's Republic, 



x.] MR. ARNOLD'S PHILOSOPHY 125 

the moment we seem to comprehend it, it eludes our 
grasp, and at length fades away into the Heavens. 
Perhaps Mr. Arnold knew that. There is nothing in 
the book to prove that he did not know it. 

Mr. Arnold's "genial and somewhat esoteric phi- 
losophy," if I may borrow a phrase applied by Sir 
George Trevelyan to his uncle, is nowhere more com- 
pendiously stated than in Friendship's Garland, which 
appeared in a complete form at the beginning of 1871. 
The history of this little book is curious. The letters 
of which it consists were first printed in the Pall Mail 
Gazette, when that journal of many vicissitudes was 
edited by Mr. Frederick Greenwood. They extend 
over a period of four years, from 1866 to 1870, dealing 
chiefly with the victories of Prussia over Austria, and 
of Germany over France. Attributed to a young 
Prussian, Arminius von Thund.'i-ten-Tronckh, whose 
name is of course taken from Camdide, they really 
represent Mr. Arnold's views upon the characteristic 
deficiencies of his countrymen. It is a remarkable 
fact that, though an unsparing critic of English foibles, 
and also of the qualities upon which Englishmen 
particularly pride themselves, he never became un- 
popular. Such is the power of urbanity. The outer 
public, the widest circle of readers, knew Matthew 
Arnold chiefly from quotations in newspapers, and 
the readers of the old Pall Moll were of the "kid 
glove persuasion." But, as he said himself, the writ- 
ing people had a kindness for him ; and even those at 
whom his shafts of ridicule were directed laughed, 
unless they were translators of Homer, as heartily as 
anybody else. I can myself (and so can Mr. George 
Russell) testify to the fact that Mr. Sala, one of Mr. 



126 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

Arnold's favourite butts, regarded his facetious tor- 
mentor with friendly and respectful admiration. This 
was very creditable to Mr. Sala, but it was creditable 
to Mr. Arnold too. There was plenty of salt in his 
wit, and not much pepper. Friendships Garland 
is by far the most amusing book he ever wrote, and, 
indeed, for anything better of its kind we must go 
to Veil aire. Yet nothing would induce Mr. Arnold to 
publish a second edition of it, and for many y< ars 
before his death it was out of print. He thought it 
ephemeral, as parts of it no doubt are, and his fastidi- 
ous taste condemned it to oblivion. Fortunately, the 
iiiies of a book are not under the permanent con- 
trol of the author, and in 1898 Friendships Garland 
was brought out once more. The special phase of 
smug, complacenl Philistine Liberalism, at which it is 
chiefly aimed, had ceased to be predominant But the 
fun is immortal, and the criticism deep as well as 
sound. If the booh can be said to have a practical 
moral, it is that Englishmen should practise the virtue 
of obedience, and improve the education of the middle 
••lasses. But the charm of these pages, the most 
vivacious that even Mr. Arnold ever penned, lies in 
the inimitable drollness of the BOCial satire, and per- 
haps I can hardly do better than quote at full length 
the conversation between Arminius and the author 
upon the justices at petty sessions. 

'"The three magistrates in that inn,' said T, 'are not 
three Government functionaries all cut out of one block ; 
they embody our whole national life; — the land, religion, 

commerce, arc all represented by them Lord Lumping 

i peer of old family and great estate; Beau Bittall is a 
clergyman j Mr. Bottles is one of our self-made middle-class 



*•] MR. ARNOLD'S PHILOSOPHY 



127 



men. Their polities are not all of one colour, and that 
colour the Government's. Lumpington is a constitutional 
Whig ; Hittall is a benighted old Tory. As for Mr. Bottles, 
he is a Radical of the purest water ; quite one of the Man- 
chester school. He was one of the earliest free-traders, he 
has always gone as straight as an arrow about Reform ; he 
is an ardent voluntary in every possible line, opposed the 
Ten Hours' Bill, was one of the leaders of the Dissenting 
opposition out of Parliament which smashed up the educa* 
tion clauses of Sir James Graham's Factory Act; and he 
paid the whole expenses of a most important church-rate 
contest out of his own pocket. And, finally, he looks for- 
ward to marrying his deceased wile's sister. Table, as my 
friend Mr. Grant Duff says, the whole Liberal creed, and in 
not a single point of it will y.»u find Bottles tripping.' 
'That is all very well as to their politics,' said Anninius, 
'but I want to hear about their education and intelligence.' 
'There, too, I can satisfy you,' I answered. ' Lumpington 
was at Eton. Hittall ^\as on the foundation at Charter- 
home, placed there by his uncle, a distinguished prelate, 
who was one of the trustees. You know we English have 
no notion of your bureaucratic tyranny of treating the ap- 
pointments to these great foundations as public patronage, 
and resting them in a responsible minister; we vest them in 
independent magnates, who relieve the State ..fall work and 
responsibility, and never take a shilling of salary for their 
trouble. Hittall was the last of six nephews nominated to 
the Charterhouse by his uncle, this good prelate, who had 
thoroughly learnt the divine lesson that charity begins at 
home.' ' But I want to know what his nephew learnt,' in- 
terrupted Anninius, 'and what Lord Lumpington learnt at 
Eton.' 'They followed,' said 1, 'the grand, old, fortifying, 
classical curriculum.' 'Did they know anything when they 
left?' asked Arminius. 'I have seen some longs and shorts 
of HittaU's,' said I, ' about the Calydonian Boar, which were 
not bad. But you surely don't need me to tell you, Arminius, 
that it is rather in training and bracing the mind for future 
acquisition — a course of mental gymnastics we call it — than 
in teaching any set thing, that the classical curriculum is so 



128 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

valuable.' ' Were the minds of Lord Lumpington and Mr. 
Hittall much braced by their mental gymnastics?' inquired 
Arminius. 'Well,' I answered, 'during their three years at 
Oxford they were so much occupied with Bullingdon and 
hunting, that there was no great opportunity to judge. But 
for my part I have always thought that their both getting 
their degree at last with living colours, after three weeks of 
a famous coach for fast men, four nights without going to 
bed, and an incredible consumption of wet towels, strong 
cigars, and brandy and water, was one of the most astonish- 
ing feats of mental gymnastics I ever heard of.' ' That will 
do for the land and the Church,' said Arminius ; 'and now 
let us hear about commerce.' 'You mean how was Bottles 
educated?' answered I. 'Here we get into another line 
altogether, but a very good line in its way, too. Mr. 
Bottles was brought up at the Lycurgus House Academy, 
Peckham. You are not to suppose from the name of 
Lycurgus that any Latin and Greek was taught in the 
establishment j the name only indicates the moral discipline, 
and the strenuous earnest character, imparted there. As to 
the instruction, the thoughtful educator who was principal 
of the Lycurgus House Academy. — Archimedes Silverpump, 
Ph.D., you must have heard of him in Germany? — had 
modern views. " We must be men of our age," he used to 
say. "Useful knowledge, living languages, and the forming 
of the mind through observation and experiment, these are 
the fundamental articles of my educational creed." Or as I 
have heard his pupil Bottles put it in his expansive moments 
after dinner: ''Original man, Silverpump! fine mind! fine 
system. None of your antiquated rubbish — all practical 
work — latest discoveries in science — mind constantly kept 
excited — lots of interesting experiments — lights of all colours 
— fizz! fizz! bang! bang! That's what 1 call forming a 
man ! " ' 'And pray,' cried Arminius impatiently, 'what 
sort of man do you suppose this internal quack really formed 
in your precious friend Mr. Bottles?' 'Well,' I replied, 'I 
hardly know how to answer that question. Bottles has 
certainly made an immense fortune ; but as to Silverpump's 
effect on his mind, whether it was from any fault in the 



x] MR. ARNOLD'S PHILOSOPHY 129 

Lycurgus House system, whether it was that with a sturdy 
self-reliance thoroughly English, Bottles, ever since he quitted 
Silverpunip, left his mind wholly to itself, his daily news- 
paper, and the Particular Baptist minister under whom he 
sat, or from whatever cause it was, certainly his mind, qud 

mind ' ' You need not go on,' interrupted Arminius, ' I 

know what that man's mind, qud mind, is, well enough.' " 

I do not think that Matthew Arnold ever surpassed 
this dialogue. The only criticism I should make upon 
it is that the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill got upon his 
nerves, and that he always seemed to regard it as a 
compulsory measure. Public opinion, however, was to 
some extent with him, for it has not yet become law. 



CHAPTEB XI 

MR. ABNOLD'S THEOLOGY 

I i any formal theologian should cast a roving eye 
over this book, or over this chapter, he will probably 
deny that Mr. Arnold had any theology at all. For 
jus1 as Mr. Frederic Harrison " Bought vainly in him a 
Bystem of philosophy with principles coherent, inter- 
dependent, subordinate, ami derivative," so Mr. Glad- 
stone observed, with less pedantry, ami more humour, 
thai he combined a Bincere devotion to the christian 
mn with a tamlty for presenting it in such a form 
• be recognisable neither by friend nor foe. This 
is a more "damning sentence," to adopt Mr. Arnold's 
own phrase, than Mr. Harrison's. It is indeed the best 
and tersesl criticism ever passed upon Mr. Arnold's 
theological writings. I am not in the least inclined 
t<» agree with Mr. Russell, who dismisses those writ- 
ings in a Bigh, or with Professor Saintsbury, who dis- 
poses of them with a sneer. I do not understand how 
d scholar like Mr. Saintsbury can think, that unless 
the Fourth Gospel is '•revelation. - ' its date is imma- 
terial, whether that date were the first century, the 
fourth century, or the fourteenth. < >n the contrary, 
it seems to me that Mr. Arnold Bel before himself a 
perfectly legitimate, and even laudable object, but that 
with many brilliant qualifications there were fatal 
obstacles to his success. The date of the Gospels, 

130 



chap, xi.] MR. ARNOLD'S THEOLOGY 131 

and the history of their composition, are not merely- 
interesting in themselves, but absolutely essential to 
the estimate of their historical value. Nobody says 
that the first Decade of Livy is " revelation." But its 
almost total worthlessness as history is mainly, though 
not entirely, due to the distance between the age of 
Augustus and the age of the kings. 

Mr. Arnold's Biblical criticism was not substantially 
original. He availed himself of researches made by 
more learned men, such as Ewald, Gesenius, and 
Kuenen. His treatment of the subject was his own, 
and it was not in all respects fortunate. 8t. Paul ami 
Protestantism is not really a theological book. Writ- 
ing on the 20th of September 1872 to his friend 
M. Fontanes, a French pastor of the broad school, he 
says: "En parlant de St. Paul, je n'ai pas parle en 
tlieologien, mais en homme de lettres mecontent de 
la tres mauvai.se critique litteraire qu'on appliquait 
a un grand esprit ; si j'avais parle en theologien on 
ne m'eut pas ecoute." The author of Literature ami 
Dogma was certainly heard, and heard with attention, 
though not always with approval. Before, however, 
dealing with that work, 1 must mention some pre- 
liminary matters. In the same letter from Avhich I 
have just quoted, written throughout in French, Mr. 
Arnold refers to a little work on Isaiah just published, 
which was succeeding "well enough." The success 
was not permanent, nor was it of the kind which 
Mr. Arnold especially desired. The Great Prophecy 
of Israel's Restoration was intended for use in ele- 
mentary schools. Sir Joshua Fitch informs us that 
it has never been used in a single school. It has long 
been out of print, and is now exceedingly scarce. It 



132 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

contains the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, with 
a long explanatory preface, rather copious notes, and 
a few changes in the English of the Authorised Ver- 
sion. Mr. Arnold's purpose was to help English 
school-children in reading these wonderful chapters 
"without being frequently Btopped by passages of 
which the meaning is almost or quite unintelligible." 
The little hook appeared before the Revised Version 
of the (Mil Testament was finished, but it. cannot be 
said to have been superseded by that translation, for 

One LS almost as dead as the other. The Authorised 

Version of the Bible has defects as well as beauties, 
among which the reckless ami indiscriminate use of 
pronouns is perhaps the most prominent. But it has 

a hold upon the English people which nothing can 

shake, and Dr. Newman felt its loss more acutely 

than anything else when he left the Church of I 

Land. "Who hath believed our report '.' " may be an 
obvious mistranslation. But there is no more chance 
of getting rid of it than of expunging •■ I know that 
my Redeemer liveth " on similar grounds from the 
Book of dob. still it is a good thing to read these 
chapters as a whole, and they have no connection 
wh: r with the rest of Isaiah. 

In February L872 Matthew Arnold's 
died at Harrow, aged eighteen, and was buried with 
hi- two brothers at Lab-ham. The following year he 
removed from Harrow, which had too many sad asso- 
ciations for Mrs. Arnold, and settled at Tain's Hill, 
< lobham, Surrey, which was his home for the remainder 
of his life. 

The publication of Literature and I><>iim<i in 1873 
marks a distinct and definite epoch of Matthew 



xi.] MR. ARNOLD'S THEOLOGY 133 

Arnold's life. With this book he severed himself from 
orthodox Christianity, and even from Unitarianism 
as commonly understood. lie had, indeed, a curious 
dislike of Unitarians, whom he called Socinians, which 
he may have inherited from his father. Yet his own 
creed, if creed it can be called, would have horrified 
Dr. Arnold far more than theirs. For he rejected not 
merely miracles, but the personality of God. Nor, it 
must be admitted, did he always express himself in 
reverent language, and with a due regard for the feel- 
ings of others. He gave intense pain to a distinguished 
philanthropist, whose own beliefs were of the straitest, 
by comparing him with the Persons of the Trinity, and 
though he afterwards withdrew this unseemly jest, 
singularly devoid of humour as it was, the bad impres- 
sion it created remained, because it was the index to 
a frame of mind. The reference to " the Bishops of 
Winchester and Gloucester" was more pardonable, 
because it was founded on a phrase or phrases used 
by themselves. But it was in bad taste, and the need- 
less repetition of it is most wearisome. Repetition is 
the besetting sin of .Mr. Arnold's later prose. It was 
ever the fault of our English nation, said the man who 
knew the English nation best, that when they have 
a good thing they make it too common. Mr. Arnold 
happened early in life to stamp one or two happy 
expressions upon English literature. He was thereby 
encouraged to say a thing over and over again merely 
because he thought it particularly good himself. That 
is bad literature, and even bad journalism, though it 
is, alas, very common. Another tiresome trick which 
grew upon Mr. Arnold with advancing years, was the 
use of the first person plural for the first person 



134 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

singular. "We" in a leading article may be defended 
because an article sometimes expresses the writer's 
opinion as well as the editor's. " We" in a hook is 
mere affectation, unless there are more authors than 
one. 

These, however, are superficial criticisms, though 
necessary to be made. The hock is one of great power 
and beauty, saturated with religious sentiment, and 
inculcating the loftiest standard of morals. It is, per- 
haps, an instance of Nemesis that for once Mr. Arnold's 
humour fails him. The University of Cambridge pro- 
vided him with an admirable opportunity by setting 

a subjecl fora prize poem tin- words of Lucreti 
Hominum divumque vdiv\ >> Venus. But he did 

not rise to it. The attempt is a failure The object of 
the book, on the Other hand, is wholly serious, ami 
wholly laudable. It is 1 . » free Christianity from excres- 
cences which, in Mr. Arnold's opinion, had corrupted 
the essence and marred the utility <>f < 'In; ching. 

The quotations on the title-page indicate its Bcope, 
They are from the Vulgate, from Senancour, the 
author of Obermann, and from Bishop Butler. Butler 
argues, in his weighty and dignified manner, thai fresh 
discoveries may be made in the interpretation of the 
Bible, just as they are made in the field of natural 
science. Butler was not quite so orthodox as Mr. 
I rladstone would have us Buppo 

No candid mind could, I think, find any fault with 
the aim of Mr. Arnold's theological writings, Goethe 
told Eckermann that he thought his books had given 
men a new and enlarged sense of freedom. That was 
Mr. Arnold 1 re, and it is surely a laudable one. 

The discussion of his methods is a delicate task. I 



xi.] MR. ARNOLD'S THEOLOGY 135 

know the heat of the fires which are banked beneath 
those treacherous ashes. Mr. Arnold had become 
alarmed by the attitude of the working classes towards 
the Christian faith. He did not know very much 
about the working classes, but some highly cultivated 
artisans read his works, and corresponded with him. 
From them he gathered that the cream of their order, 
the intellectual aristocracy of labour, were rejecting 
all religion because they could not believe in miracles, 
or in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, lie thought 
it a grievous thing that people should squabble over 
such a question as disestablishment, while the very 
existence of religion itself was at stake. He therefore 
proceeded to set forth his own ideas of what reason- 
able men might hold, and pious men might abandon. 
Popular theology rested on a mistaken conception of 
the Bible as a scientific work, whereas the Bible was 
literary, not scientific, and could not be broken up 
into propositions, like a manual of logic. Religion 
was concerned with conduct, and conduct he quaintly 
defined as three-fourths of human life. Nothing was 
so easy to understand as conduct, though nothing was 
harder than always to do right. The truth of religion 
was not to be proved by morals, nor by metaphysics, 
but by personal and practical experiment. "He that 
doeth my will shall know of the doctrine." This view 
was not original. Among Mr. Arnold's own contem- 
poraries, Dr. Martineau, a member of the despised 
sect, was never tired of urging it. The definition of 
religion as " morality touched by emotion " is happy, 
and the most orthodox Christian might accept it, so 
far as it goes. 

But Mr. Arnold called upon us to reject a good 



136 MATTHEW AKXOLD [chap. 

deal in the hope of saving the rest. The proposition 
that "the God of the Universe is a Person" he set 
aside as unprofitable and mischievous. God was the 
Eternal, and the Eternal was the enduring power, not 
ourselves, which makes for righteousness. Therefore 
Mr. Arnold, in quoting the Bible, substituted "the 
Ktcrnal" for "the Lord," which lie regarded, Heaven 
knows why, as meaning " a magnified and nun-natural 
man." The effect upon the ordinary reader, who 
knows the Authorised Version almost by heart, is like 
Buddenly swallowing a fish-bone. Mr. Arnold seems to 
have been pleased with " the Eternal " from the mouths 
of boys and girls in the Jewish schools he inspected. 
But he forgot that, to say nothing of other considera- 
tions, in stately and rhythmical English three syl- 
lables are very different from one. " Der Aberglaube 
des Lebens," said < roethe; — " I'.'.i ra be- 
lief is the Poetry of Lite.'* Mr. Arnold, who cites this 
passage with approval, nevertheless proposes to get rid 
of the poetry by the rationalism of faith, lie points 

out that a belief in the nearness of the Second Advent 
was universal among early Christians, including the 

Apostles, and that some of the words attributed to 
Christ can hardly be construed in any other sense. 

He shows that St. Paul interpreted Hebrew prophecy 

in a manner which will not bear examination, that 

Christ was far above His reporters, who may possibly 

have misunderstood Him, and that the Zeit-Gei8t, the 
Time-Spirit, has made belief in miracles impossible. 
"The Kingdom of God is within you" was the essence 
of the true gospel. The method and secret of Jesus 
were repentance and peace. He "restored the intui- 
tion " which belonged to Israel, though what this 



xi.] MR. ARNOLD'S THEOLOGY 137 

intuition is does not very clearly appear. "God is 
a spirit " means " God is an influence," the influence 
which preserves us against faults of temper, and faults 
of sensuality. The supposed variance between St. 
Paul and St. James is a mistake (here Mr. Arnold be- 
comes unexpectedly orthodox). Works without faith 
are as futile as faith without works. "Neither cir- 
cumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but 
the keeping of the Commandments of God." 

To all which it may of course be said, that Mr. 
Arnold could not pick and choose. Christ's teaching 
must be taken as a whole, or as we have it. If He 
did not say, "Go ye and teacli all nations," how do we 
know that He said, "I am the resurrection and the 
life " ? If He did not say, " Destroy this temple, and I 
will build it again in three days," how do we know 
that He said, " Blessed are the meek" ? Once begin 
to tamper with the record, and you saw the branch on 
which you are sitting between yourself and the tree. 
According to this emphatic and uncritical but not 
illogical creed, the whole of the New Testament must 
stand or fall together. The resurrection cannot indeed 
be put on the same footing as the crucifixion, because 
the crucifixion is in Tacitus. The miracle of the Gad- 
arene swine cannot be bracketed with the Sermon on 
the Mount, because the Sermon on the Mount must 
have been composed by some one, though the swine 
never existed at all, or never left their pastures. But 
unless we believe that Christ said exactly what is 
attributed to Him in the gospels at the precise time 
and in the precise place there given, we must regard 
Him as a purely mythical personage. Mr. Arnold 
would have replied that Christ did not speak Greek, 



138 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

the most metaphysical, but Aramaic, the plainest of 
languages; that ideas have therefore been imputed to 
Him which He never intended; that the authority of 
the savings reported to have been uttered after His 
death cannot be as high as if that event had not 
occurred ; that both the date and the authorship of the 
Fourth Gospel are obscure; and that it is a function 
of true criticism to reject particular expressions incon- 
sistent with ascertained character or style. He might 
have materially strengthened his position (I do not say 
that he would have established it) by a comparison of 
Christianity and Buddhism as they originally were 
with what they afterwards became. 

Some of Mr. Arnold's judgments are remarkably 
penetrating and shrewd. Such, for instance, is the 
description of Frederick Maurice, "that pure and de- 
vout spirit, of whom, however, the truth must at last 
be said, that in theology he passed his life beating the 
bush with deep emotion, and never starting the hare." 
So, too, of the three creeds. It may be irreverent, but 
it is exceedingly clever from Mr. Arnold's point of 
view, to call them popular science, learned science, and 
Learned science with a strong dash of temper. To Mr. 
Arnold all creeds were anathema, lie could not away 
with them. The Apostles' was as bad as the Nicene, 
and the Nii-ene no better than the Athanasian. Yet 
that he never lost his hold upon vital religion is surely 
clear from the fine passage on the 102nd page of the 
first edition, where he says that though religion makes 
for men's happiness, it does not rest upon that as a 
motive, but " finds a far surer ground in personal 
devotion to Christ, who brought the doctrine to His 
disciples and made a passage for it into their hearts; 



xi.] MR. ARNOLD'S THEOLOGY 130 

in believing that Christ is come from God, following 
Christ, loving Christ. And in the happiness which 
this believing in Him, following Him, and loving 
Him gives, it finds the mightiest of sanctions." Lit- 
erature and Dogma never rises to the level of Ecce 
Homo either in substance or in style. It is less high, 
less deep, less penetrating, less sympathetic. But 
its moral and intellectual honesty is stamped upon 
every page. 

The storm which raged round Literature and Dogma 
found an echo even in the family circle. He had to 
defend himself to his sister Fanny, and he did so in 
words as unquestionably dignified as they are obvi- 
ously sincere. " There is a levity," he says (Letters, 
vol. ii. page 120), " which is altogether evil ; but to treat 
miracles and the common anthropomorphic ideas of God 
as what one may lose and yet keep one's hope, courage, 
and joy, as what are not really matters of life and 
death in the keeping or losing of them, this is desirable 
and necessary, if one holds, as I do, that the common 
anthropomorphic idea of God and the reliance on 
miracles must and will inevitably pass away." That 
is an accurate summary of Mr. Arnold's position, which 
was further developed in God and the Bible (187;*)). 
This work, reprinted from the Contemporary Review, is 
a sequel to Literature and Dogma, and a reply to its 
critics. There is no levity in God and the Bible, nor is 
it entirely destructive. For while the first part aims 
at separating Christianity from the God of Miracles 
and the God of Metaphysics, the second part is directed 
against those German Rationalists who regard the 
Fourth Gospel as an elaborate fiction in the style of 
Plato. " Religion," says Lord Salisbury in his incisive 



140 MATTHEW ARNOLD [.map. 

•way, "can no more be separated from dogma than 
light from the sun." And on this point Mr. Gladstone 
would have completely agreed with him. But even 
the rare concurrence of two political oppositea cannot 
alter the fact that in all ages of the world's history 
dogma has been a matter of indifference, or even of 
active dislike, to profoundly religious minds. To 
them Mr. Arnold appealed without the fervenl piety 
of Archbishop Leighton, but at the Bame time with an 
earnest, almost passionate, desire to Bave spirituality 
from the onward rush of materialism. Of the Eu- 
hemeristic method, which makes merely quantitative 
concession, he speaks with scorn, ii It is as if we were 
startled by the extravagance of supposing Cinderella's 
fairy godmother to have actually changed the pumpkin 
into a coach and six. but should - t that she 

really did change it into a one-horse cab." Bui in his 
metaphysical chapter he involves himself in specu- 
lations almost as fanciful, lie advises his disciples, 
the readers who ran Literature and Dogma through so 
many editions in bo short a time, not to use the word 
"being," or any of its tenses, when they speak about 
God. For the Greek verb efyu, it seems, is derived from 
9 mskrit root which signifies the act of breathing, 
and is purely phenomenal in the proper sense of that 
mueli abused term. But this is like the discovery, 
true or fancied, that the Avord God means "shining." 
(hii hoeret in litera hceret in cortice. Etymology only 
proves itself. Mr. Arnold makes great play with the 
criticism thai LiU rature and Dogma was wanting in 
"vigour and rigour." Hut he certainly disposes of 
Descartes's Cogito, ergo sum in a rigorous and vigor- 
ous fashion enough. Self-consciousness is more than 



xi.] MK. ARNOLD'S THEOLOGY 141 

breathing, and no mere philologist can explain it away. 
Mr. Arnold is on mnch firmer ground when he deals 
with the historic materials for the life of Christ. 
" The record," he says, " when we first get it, has 
passed tli rough at least half a century or more of oral 
tradition, and through more than one written account." 
Mr. Arnold's view, and since his time the learned 
Professor Hainack's view, of the Fourth Gospel is 
that St. John was the original source from which the 
sayings attributed to Christ in it come, but that he 
diil not write the Gospel, that he was not responsible 
for the form of it, and that spurious sayings, or logia, 
of Christ were mixed up with those which are gen- 
uine. "We might," says Mr. Arnold, "go through 
the Fourth Gospel chapter by chapter, and endeavour 
to assign to each and all of the logia in it their 
right character — to determine what in them is prob- 
ably Jesus, and what is the combining, repeating, 
and expanding Greek editor. But this would be for- 
eign to our object." Vigorous and rigorous enough. 
But nobody, not even Professor Harnack, can know as 
much as that. This Greek editor is an imaginary 
personage. He may have existed, or he may not. 
Mr. Arnold's service to Biblical criticism lies not in 
inventing him, but in showing how much more the 
interpretation of the Bible is a literary than a meta- 
physical task. 

Last Essays on Church and Religion (1877) do what 
their name implies. They close the chapter of Mr. 
Arnold's theology, and may fitly close this chapter of 
mine. They are chiefly interesting for a thoughtful 
and appropriate study of Bishop Butler, originally 
delivered in the form of two lectures to the Philo- 



142 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chaf. 

sophical Institution at Edinburgh. Tho effect of these 
•. s apoD my mind is not precisely what Mr. Arnold 
intended it to be. " Bishop Butler and ti 
he called them. TheZeit-G i Mr. Arnold's hands, 

like the •• Y Suprfime " in Robespierre 5 into be 

a bore. The picture of the I Bishop, or rather of 
the great man who happened bop, drawn 

with Mr. Arnold's winning and pr< 
allures and at the Bame time holder. It 

ie at Least to understand the bu] y of 

Butl( ford in Mr. Arnold's time, and in Mr. 

Glad l ' Butler did not gra] 

did not pretend to grapple, with the rool of the q 
tion. He assumed not merely the e nee of God, 

of u future life. He laid himself 

to the Logically unanswerable reply of Hume, 

that mi put into the conclusion than is 

contained in the | . and that therefore a world 

than this, 

though it may L I' le that Butler 

made oth< Mill. 

Mr. a . truly • .1 ■•/>/ was 

aimed b 10b of freethinkers and loos.' Livers who 

frequented Queen < , to whom Shaftes- 

bury ' fd of philosophy. 

But if all that, what aderful figure 

dns. •• T< Sir. < roldwin Smith, " an 

episcopal philosopher is a philosopher and nothing 
more; adead bishop is a dead man." Granted. But 
what a man. and what B philosophe itler. II-' 

walked through the gay throng at St. James's, he 
preached to the fashionable congregation at the E& 

Chapel like a being from another world. He I 



xi.] MR ABNOLD'8 THEOLOGY 143 

them no compliments. He offered them no congratu- 
lations. He told them the realities of things. "Things 
are what they are. and the consequences of thorn will 
be what they will be ; why then should we desire to be 
deceived '.' " Like Pascal, he was profoundly impressed 
with the littleness of human nature, and the vanity of 
all earthly concerns. He exposed with pitiless accu- 
racy the springs and motives of men's conduct. With- 
out a trace of humour, he made frivolity ridiculous. 
He almost worshipped reason. Reason, he said, was 
the only faculty by which we could judge the claims 
even of Revelation Itself. 5Te1 this cold, passionless 
criti full of benevolence, abounding in charity to 

the poor, and so devoted to works of mystical piety 
that he earned, or at least acquired, the reputation of 
a Papist. But this is not a life of Bishop Butler. 

In the preface to this volume Mr. Arnold is more 
than usually explicit about his own creed. " I believe," 
he says. " that Christianity will survive because of its 
natural truth. Those who fancied that, they had done 
with it, those who had thrown it aside because what 
iited to them under its name was so unre- 
ceivable, will have to return to it again, and to learn 
it better." He pleads eloquently for some "great 
soul" to arise, and purge the ore of Christianity from 
the dross. " But," ;ls n0 adds somewhat bitterly, "to 
rule over the moment and the credulous has more 
attraction than to work for the future and the sane." 
It is, however, sometimes rather difficult to know what 
he would be at. For in his address to the London 
clergy at Sion College he gravely argues that the State 
should adopt "some form of religion or other — that 
which seems best suited to the majority." The London 



144 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. xi. 

clergy showed him no little kindness, and politely 
made as though they agreed with him. But they 
must have been a little staggered by this Parliamentary 
view of the faith. It reminds one of the American 
who said, in the course of a discussion upon eternal 
punishment, " Well, all I can say is, that our people 
would never stand it." 

A higher conception of the Established Church may 
be found on page 37 of these Essays, where he says 
that it " is to be considered as a national Christian 
society for the promotion of goodness, to which a man 
cannot but wish well, and in which lie might rejoice to 
minister." Mr. Arnold did not write for those who 
were satisfied with the popular theology. He wrote 
for those who were not. His object was not to disturb 
any one's faith, but to convince those who could not 
believe in the performance of miracles, or the fulfilment 
of prophecies, that they need not therefore become ma- 
terialists. He could quote many texts on his side, as 
for instance, " Except I do signs and wonders ye will 
not believe," and "The Kingdom of God is within 
you." The occasional flippancy of Literature and 
Dogma, however deplorable, is a small thing compared 
witli the warfare against ignorance and grossness 
which Mr. Arnold never ceased to wage. 



CHAPTER XII 

mr. Arnold's politics 

In politics Matthew Arnold was a Liberal Conservative, 
which, as Lord John Eussell remarked, says in seven 
syllables what Whig says in one. His patron, Lord 
Lansdowne, was a Whig of the purest water, equally 
afraid of moving and of standing still. Mr. Arnold 
himself was never a candidate for Parliament. Even if 
he had been disposed to take part in the " Thyestean 
banquet of clap-trap," his position as a member of the 
Civil Service would have prevented him. But his 
practical interest in politics, always keen, increased 
with age, and during the year before his death he con- 
tributed to the Nineteenth Century a series of articles 
on the Session of 1887. When he left off dabbling in 
theology, politics absorbed him more and more. They 
promised quicker returns. " Perhaps," he wrote to 
Mr. Grant Duff, on the 22nd of August 1879, " perhaps 
we shall end our days in the tail of a rising current of 
popular religion, both ritual and dogmatic" With 
that feeling, which I suspect was stronger than the 
expression of it, Mr. Arnold turned to more mundane 
matters. No one knew better how to deliver himself, 
as Shakespeare says, like a man of this world. His 
long experience of official work had made him 
thoroughly practical. He had received from nature a 
keen eye for the central point of a case, and a power 
l 145 



146 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

of lucid exposition which is the most formidable of all 
arguments. Of working men, as I have said, he knew 
very little, though many of them read and appreciated 
his books. But with the upper and middle classes of 
society, their principles and prejudices, their faults and 
failings, he was thoroughly well acquainted. Nothing 
in his life is more honourable to him than the persistent 
efforts which he made, for more than twenty years, to 
get a decent system of secondary education established 
in this country. Only now, when he has been dead 
nearly fourteen years, is this question being really 
taken up in a practical spirit by a responsible Govern- 
ment. < Mi the ether hand, he seldom mentions political 
dissenters, whose importance he recognised, except in 
terms of caricature; and of the great driving force 
which, apart from his more conspicuous accomplish- 
ments, Mr. Gladstone wielded, he had a most imper- 
fect idea. lie took the superficial view of Whig coteries 
that the author of the Irish Land Acts, and the great- 
est financier of the age, wis a rhetorical sophist, a 
man of words and phrases, not of business and its 
execution. This view finds frequent utterance in the 
second volume of the published Letters. The piety or 
prudence of Mr. George Russell has in most instances 
suppressed the name of his former chief ; but a school- 
boy far less intelligent than Macaulay's would find no 
difficulty in tilling the blank. 

Mr. Arnold's first incursion into practical politics 
was not a fortunate one. He was a strong, almost a 
fanatical, opponent of the Burials lull. He did not 
take the line, logically unassailable, that an Established 
Church comprises the whole nation, that all its rites, 
including the Burial Service, are national, and that 



xii.] MR. ARNOLD'S POLITICS 147 

as Dissenters were entitled to burial in national 
cemeteries with national rites, they had no grievance. 
If he had been a true Erastian, that is what he would 
have said. But he chose to argue that the permission 
of other services would produce scandal, would be, as 
he repeated about fifty times, like the substitution 
for a reading from Milton of a reading from Eliza 
Cook. The twenty-three years that have elapsed since 
the Burials Bill received the Royal assent have com- 
pletely falsified this gloomy prediction. No statute 
has worked more smoothly. Even the foolish clergy- 
men who discovered to their delight that it did not com- 
pel them to let the bell be tolled for a schismatic have 
long since ceased to excite any interest. That the Act 
is inconsistent with the principle of an Established 
Church seems to me clear. But the people of England, 
though just, are not logical, and the removal of this 
grievance, which was really part of a much larger one, 
made the larger one more difficult to redress. Like 
many freethinkers, Mr. Arnold had a horror of dis- 
establishment. He was opposed to it even in Ireland, 
where the nature of things might be said to demand 
it. The last fifteen years have vindicated his belief 
that in England public opinion was against it, and 
that the political power of Nonconformity was on the 
decline. 

Mr. Arnold's volume of Mixed Essays — an unhappy 
title, suggesting biscuits — contains two or three which 
may be classed as political, and which are therefore 
fit to be treated here. "Equality" is an elaborate 
argument, which never took any hold upon the 
English people, agaiust freedom of bequest. Mr. 
Arnold had the support of Mill, but he had not the 



148 MATTHEW ARNOLD [ciiap. 

support of the public. He saw clearly enough that 
the Real Estates Intestacy Bill, with which Liberals 
used to play, would have had no practical result, for a 
man who wanted to defeat it had only to make a will. 
There is much to be said for his case. The earth, as 
Turgot put it, belongs to the living, and not to the 
dead. It is no infringement of human liberty to 
prevent a man from fettering those who come after 
him. Bnt this is a subject on which the most eloquent 
and the most profound philosophers would contend in 
vain with the customs and instincts of the English 
people. They did not mind Lord I 'airns*s Settled Land 
Act, which enables the owner of a life interest in land 
to sell it if he invests the money for the benefit of the 
reversioner. They would perhaps tolerate the complete 
abolition of all limited ownership in land. But of the 
compulsory division of property after death, which pre- 
vails on the ( Jontinent, they will not hear. Mr. Arnold 
tells an amusing story of an American who was asked 
what could be done in the United States, with its freedom 
of bequest, if a great landed estate were strictly entailed. 
The American replied, with more humour than candour, 
that the will could be set aside on the ground of 
insanity. Such is the difference of sentiment between 
the old country and the new. In this ease Mr. Arnold 
rode his hobby too hard. The feudal origin of our 
land laws is indisputable, and their practical incon- 
veniences are numerous. Yet it is not freedom of 
bequest, it is influences far more subtle and profound, 
which have "the natural and necessary effect under 
present circumstances of materialising our upper 
class, vulgarising our middle class, and brutalising 
our lower class." But, indeed, vulgarity is confined 



xii.] MR. ARNOLD'S POLITICS 149 

to no class. It is, and always must be, a property of 
the individual. 

" I do not," Mr. Arnold wrote (Mixed Essays, 2nd Ed. 
p. 108), " I do not profess to be a politician, but simply 
one of a disinterested class of observers, who, with no 
organised and embodied set of supporters to please, set 
themselves to observe honestly and to report faithfully 
thestateaud prospects of our civilisation." Thispassage, 
which fairly and modestly describes himself, is taken 
from his admirable essay on " Irish Catholicism and 
British Liberalism," in which Mr. Bright entirely con- 
curred. Unlike freedom of bequest, this subject is full 
of vivid interest and high import at the present time. 
An Irish Catholic University, fur which Mr. Arnold 
pleads, is the subject of the best and most thoughtful 
speeches Mr. Balfour has ever delivered. It is a point 
upon which he and Mr. Morley quite agree. A Royal 
Commission was appointed to consider it last year, and 
though no Government will take it up, it has enlisted 
the S3'mpathies of eminent men on both sides of 
politics. The question is beset with difficulties, and 
cannot be settled offhand by any formula. One of 
these difficulties is how a Catholic University should 
be defined. For Trinity College, Dublin, is a Catholic 
University in the sense that it admits Catholics, if only 
they would go there. And for a Catholic University 
endowed with public money but inaccessible to Pro- 
testants nobody asks. Mr. Arnold answers the ques- 
tion in a sentence. " I call Strasburg a Protestant 
and Bonn a Catholic University in this sense : that 
religion and the matters mixed up with religion are 
taught in the one by Protestants and in the other by 
Catholics." In this essay Mr. Arnold intimates his 



150 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

opinion that "the prevailing form for the Christianity 
of the future will be the form of Catholicism ; but a 
Catholicism purged, opening itself to the light and 
air, having the consciousness of its own poetry, freed 
from its sacerdotal despotism, and freed from its 
psuedo-scientific apparatus of superannuated dogma." 
It hardly seems probable. But the curtains of the fu- 
ture hang. The Professors in Mr. Arnold's University 
would In- '• nominated and removed not by the bishops, 
but by a responsible minister of State acting lor the 
Irish nation itself." A. minister of what State? This 

simple question, which Mr. Arnold does not answer, 
raises the whole issue of Home Rule. Mr. Arnold was 
very anxious that a religious census should be taken 
in England, as it is in Ireland. In Ireland everybody 
is either a Catholic or a Protestant, and nobody 
attempts to conceal which he is, bad as his Protestant- 
ism or his Catholicism may be. In England such a 
census would be fallacious, because persons holding 
Matthew Arnold's religious opinions would describe 
themselves on the census-paper as churchmen. 

In tin.'' . besides his official Reports, Mr. 

Arnold pleaded earnestly for the establishment in the 
United Kingdom of secondary or intermediate schools. 
One of them is in Mixed Essays, the other is in Irish 
Essays, of which I shall have more to say in connection 
with Ireland. One of them is called '• An Unregarded 
Irish Grievance." The other two have tin- quaint 
titles taken from the Vul be, of which Matthew 
Arnold was almost as fond as Paeon, •• Phto unum est 
necessarium,'* — "But one Thing is Needful"; and 
'" Ecce Convertimur ad Gentes," — -"Lo, we turn to the 
Gentiles." This last was a lecture delivered to the 



xii.] MR. ARNOLD'S POLITICS 151 

Working Men's College at Ipswich, and the Gentiles 
were the working classes, whose interest in the subject 
M i-. Arnold wished to arouse. All these essays deserve 
the most careful study. They were written by a 
master of his subject, they are as full of knowledge as 
of zeal, they are eminently practical, and they have 
the most direct bearing upon the politics of the day. 
The course of events has in this matter fully justified 
Mr. Arnold, who was wiser than the statesmen, and 
ahead of his time. In his address at Ipswich he took 
another dip into the future which also showed his pre- 
science. "No one in England,*' he said, "seems to 
imagine that municipal government is applicable 
except in towns." And he went on to suggest the 
policy, since carried out by both political parties, in 
the form of County and District and Parish Councils. 

In the preface to Irish Essays, dated 1882, Mr. 
Arnold says that " practical politicians and men of the 
world are apt rather to resent the incursion of a, man 
of letters into the field of politics." They only resent 
it when he does not take their side. Both Unionists 
and Home Rulers were always boasting of their 
literary supporters in the great controversy of 1886. 
But it must be admitted that the wise men of the 
study do not always see further ahead than the mere 
politicians of the market-place. Writing, in French, 
to M. Fontanes on the 22nd of September 1882, Mr. 
Arnold says, " The English army will leave Egypt." 
The process of departure has been slow. 

Whatever Mr. Arnold wrote about Ireland is worth 
serious attention. He took for his master Burke, 
perhaps the greatest intellect of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, certainly the greatest intellect concerned with 



152 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

Irish affairs. For Burke, though an expatriated Irish- 
man, never lost his love of Ireland, ami understood 
her thoroughly. Himself a Protestant, his wire was a 
Catholic, as his mother had been, and though he had 
plenty of bigotry in politics, from religious bigotry he 
was free. The great change produced upon him by 
events in France did not affect his Irish policy, and to 
the day of his death he supported Catholic Emancipa- 
tion. Whether, if he had lived three years Longer, he 
would have been in favour of a Union, we cannot cer- 
tainly tell. That he would not have voted for it with- 
out emancipation we may be sure. .Mr. Arnold. 1 
think, failed to appreciate the greatness of the reform 
elicited by the Land Art of 1881. But his acute 
analysis of its influence npon Irish opinion is quite in 
Burke's manner. Ministers, he sa\ . Lared their 
belief that there wen- very few extortionate landlords 
in Ireland. But the Act has led to ;i general reduc- 
tion of rents. Therefore the Irish j pie will say, 

"We : no thanks; yon have done us justice 

without meaning it. S*bu could not help it, our ease 
was SO Btrong." " Burke," says Mr. Arnold, truly and 

finely, "Burke is, it seems to me, the greatest of 
English statesmen in this sense at any rate : that he is 
the only one who traces the reason of things in politics, 

and enables us to trace it tun." Mr. Arnold aimed at. 

following that g 1 example, and when he failed, it- 
was because he had not, like Ibirke, the political 
training which m> amount of cleverness can altogether 
supply. In one of the two essays on '-The Incom- 
patible* " he .cutely enough, "Our aristocratic 
class does not firmly protest against the unfair treat- 
ment of Irish Catholicism, because it is nervous about 



xii.] MB. ABNOLD'S POLITICS 153 

the land. Our middle class does not firmly insist 
on breaking with the old evil system of Irish land- 
lordism, because it is nervous about Popery." In the 
other he says that the English are "just, but not 
amiable," which, if not strictly and literally true, is at 
least worth thinking about. But, on the other hand, 
it was not practical politics, nor yet common sense, to 
suggest that instead of giving Irish tenants fair rent, 
free sale, and fixity of tenure, Irish landlords should 
be bought out if, in the opinions of Lord Coleridge 
and Mr. Samuel Morley, they deserved to be. Mr. 
Arnold's essay on Copyright is chiefly remarkable for 
its advocacy of international copyright with the United 
States on terms since obtained, and its repudiation of 
Lord Farcer's theory, supported by .Mr. Gladstone, that 
authors could rely upon royalties. But "The Future 
of Liberalism " contains what seems to me a funda- 
mental misconception on Mr. Arnold's part, and a 
fruitful parent of error. "In general," he says, "the 
mind of the country is, as I have already said, pro- 
foundly Liberal." Mr. Arnold was apt to think, with 
the bellman in the Hunting of th<> Snark, that what he 
told you three times was true. England is not pro- 
foundly Liberal, and never was. She is profoundly 
Conservative, and always has been. There was an out- 
burst of Liberalism in the early Thirties, caused partly 
by the Revolution of 1830 in France, and partly by 
the intolerable absurdities of our representative sys- 
tem. Mr. Gladstone had the power of rousing extraor- 
dinary enthusiasm on behalf of particular policies 
at particular times. But these are the exceptions to 
the rule, which is patient acquiescence in things as 
they are. That is why most of the wisest English- 



154 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

men have been Liberals. There is no risk of too rapid 
progress in England. The danger is the other way. 

It must, I think, be reckoned one of the few mis- 
fortunes in a most happy life that Matthew Arnold 
should have been tempted to visit America as a public 
lecturer. No doubt the temptation was great. Mr. 
Arnold's means were moderate, and he had to provide 
for his family as well as for himself. His own tastes 
were of the simplest, and he was the most contented 
of men. But a large sum of money was a consideration 
to him, while both he and his wife had always been 
fond of travelling. Bo in the autumn of 1883 they 
went. Of course they were most warmly greeted, and 

most hospitably entertained, l'.ut the lecturing was 
not a succ Major Pond, in his EooentricUiet of 

Genius, say-. •• Matthew Arnold came to this country 
and gave one hundred lecture-. Nobody ever heard 
any of them, not even those Bitting in the front row." 
He adds that General Grant, who attended the firs! 
lecture in Chickering Hall, New York, was overheard 

to say after a few minutes, " Well, wife, we have paid 
to see the British lion; we cannot hear him mar, so we 
had better go home," This explains a passage in Mr. 

Arnold's letter to his sister Fanny, dated the 8th 

of November L883, in which the General is repre- 
sented as calling at the office of the Tribune "to thank 
them for their good report of the main points of my 
lecture, as he had thought the line taken so very 

important, but had heard imperfectly." Although he 
had been a Professor at Oxford. Mr. Arnold was not 
accustomed to address crowded audiences in large 
halls, and he did not understand the management of 
his voice. He took lessons in elocution at Boston, 



xii.] MR. ARNOLD'S POLITICS 155 

but at the age of sixty it was late to learn, and the 
thing was not in his line. He took it, as he took 
everything, with invincible cheerfulness and good- 
humour. But it has a rather grotesque effect to read 
in a letter to his younger daughter, written from the 
Union Club, Chicago, on the 21st of January 1884, 
" We have had a week of good houses (I consider my- 
self now as an actor, for my managers take me about 
with theatrical tickets, at reduced rates, over the rail- 
ways, and the tickets have Matthew Arnold troupe 
printed on them)." Lord Coleridge and Sir Henry 
Irving, who were both there at the same time with 
him, were both in their respective places, but one feels 
that Matthew Arnold was out of place. He enjoyed 
himself of course, — he always did. I remember the 
delight with which he told me of his invitation from 
Mr. Phineas Barnum, " the greatest showman on 
earth." "You, Mr. Arnold,'' wrote the great man, 
" are a celebrity, I am a notoriety ; we ought to be 
acquainted." " I couldn't go," remarked Mr. Arnold, 
" but it was very nice of him." Matthew Arnold told 
Mr. George Russell that Discourses in America, pub- 
lished by Macmillan in 1885, was the book of all others 
by which he should most wish to be remembered. It 
consists of three lectures, but the only one which 
can be called political is the first, on " Numbers, or 
the Majority and the Remnant." The argument of this 
essay is as follows. The majority are always wrong ; 
the remnant are always right. Isaiah represented the 
remnant of Israel ; Plato represented the remnant of 
Athens. In both cases the State was so small that 
the remnant were not numerous enough to do any 
good. In the United States the population is so large 



156 MATTHEW AENOLD [chap. 

that the remnant must be sufficient, and the United 
States are therefore safe. I cannot suppose that this 
was anything hut elaborate irony on Mr. Arnold's 
part, or that his more intelligent hearers were un- 
conscious of tin' fart. But there were many digres- 
sions. It is here that he rebukes his old friends the 
French for their worship of "the great goddess Lubric- 
ity," called by the Creeks Aselgeia, and describes 
Victor Hugo in one of Ids least felicitous phrases as 
"the average sensual man impassioned and grandilo- 
quent." greatest of French dramatists since 
singularly free from the fault which Mr. 
Arnold here repreb 

This was not Mr. Arnold's last visit to the United 
States, when- his elder daughter married ami settled. 
lb- went these again in L886, and arrived at the 
siir_ r ular conclusion that all t" t. opinion of 

America, the opinion of the » remnant," was hostile 
to the [rish policy of Mr. I -one. Truly the 

3 what it brings with it the power of seeing. 
This is n ' in which to disCUSS whether 

II me Rule for Ireland would be a good thing or a 
bad. That the majority of intelligent and eultiv. 
Americans thought it in 1886, as thej think it now, 
to be a good thin.,', there can be HO doubt whatever. 
Although he had American friends, whom he valued 
and appreciated, Mr. Arnold did not altogether like 
America. In the A | '■/,■>/ for April 1888, 

the year and month of his death, may lie seen his 
final judgment on the subject. He had written the 
year before for his nephew. Mr. Edward Arnold, 
then editor of Murray's Magazine, two articles on 
rather dull Memoirs of General Grant, whom, in 



xii.] MR. ARNOLD'S POLITICS 157 

one of his freaks of waywardness, he pronounced 
superior to Lincoln. Lincoln, it seems, the author 
of the speech at Gettysburg and the Second Inaugu- 
ral, had no " distinction." Happy the nation where 
such classic eloquence is not distinguished. Mr. Ar- 
nold's last word on American life is the word " unin- 
teresting." "The mere nomenclature of the country 
acts upon a cultivated person like the incessant 
pricking of pins." The "funny man" is a "national 
misfortune." So he is here. And, after all, Mark 
Twain is better than Ally Sloper. Mr. Arnold's 
criticism of what was unsound in American insti- 
tutions and manners would have been more effective 
if he had had, like Mr. Bryce, more sympathy with 
what was sound in them. 

Any survey of Matthew Arnold's politics would 
be incomplete without a reference to his opinions 
on Home Rule. To Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule 
Bill of 1886 he was decidedly opposed. Both before 
and after the General Election of that year he 
wrote to the Times a strong protest against the 
policy embodied in it. These letters, except for 
the personal animosity to Mr. Gladstone which the 
second displays, are wholly admirable in tone and 
tenip''i\ In them Mr. Arnold admits to the fall 
the grievances of Ireland against England, and calls 
for their redress. Only he would redress them, not 
by a " separate Parliament," but by a " rational and 
equitable system of government." Lord Salisbury's 
policy of coercion suited him as little as Mr. Glad- 
stone's policy of repeal. He proposed that the local 
government of Ireland should be thoroughly over- 
hauled and made truly popular, even before such a 



158 



MATTHEW ARNOLD 



[chat. XII. 



system was introduced into the rest of the United 
Kingdom. These letters show the Whig spirit at 
its best, and are thoroughly characteristic of Mr. 
Arnold. He followed them up the next year with 
three articles in the Nineteenth Century called respec- 
tively "The Zenith of Conservatism," " dp to Easter," 
and - From Easter to August." In these, while giving 
a general support to the Government of Lord Salis- 
bury, he showed himself to be a very had Unionist 
from the strictly orthodox point of view; for he pro- 
posed that there Bhould be not a single Irish Parlia- 
ment, but two Irish Parliaments, of which one should 
-late for the North and the other for the South. 
The fart is. it was not Home Rule, but Gladstone's 
II me Rule, that Matthew Arnold disliked. Indeed, 
one might almost say that it was not Home Kule, but 
Gladstone. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE AFTERMATH 

During the last twenty years of his life Matthew 
Arnold wrote very little poetry; but the little he did 
write was very good. There are lines in " Westminster 
Abbey " which he never surpassed, and a few which, 
in ray opinion, he never equalled. This beautiful 
poem was coin posed in memory of Dean Stanley, and 
it could have had no worthier subject For Stanley, 
Mr. Arnold's lifelong friend, was not merely the 
courtly ecclesiastic, the scholarly divine; he was the 
chivalrous defender of all causes and of all persons, 
however unpopular for the moment, that stood for 
Freedom, charity, and truth. If the spirit of Dean 
Stanley had always dominated the Establishment, the 
Liberation Society would never have been formed. 
The chapter in Mrs. Besant's Autobiography describing 
Dr. Stanley is a noble picture of what a Christian 
minister should be. He delighted in all the traditions 
of his Abbey, and Mr. Arnold happily chose to connect 
with him the beautiful legend which tells of its mystic 
consecration by St. Peter himself. In spite of the 
fact that these sonorous stanzas recall Milton's great 
Ode on the Nativity, they are not disappointing; they 
have the note of the grand style — 

" Rough was the winter eve ; 
Their craft the fishers leave, 
159 



100 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

And down over the Thames the darkn aa drew. 
last, and turns, and < j • Pile 

Bnge in the gloon w in Thome] Isle, 

King B( bei ' r new. 

— 'Tie Lambeth dow, where then 
They ii unong the bnlrosh sterna ; 

a ..1 thai aew Minster in the matti 

rld-fami i ing Thami 

The- ■ be called Milton en if 

they have not the inimitabL h of the master. 

But it is th 'I temophoon, •• 

charm'd li;tl><' of the Eleusinian king," which I Bhould 
be disposed I the high-water mark of 

They haunt the memory 
with that ineffaceable charm which b only to the 

poetical expret don — 

•. 
i mortal lot. 

i. og sine.', his name b no more. 

The nursliiiLT of tl : ither dl 

And ••'•• ;■• irhex .... 

Here one might well tal of Matthew Arnold's 

is, and pass to those literary • hich he 

wrote in the full maturity of his knowledge and his 
power. For, happy in bo many things, he was hap] 

!1 in this, th i bodilj ud m> mental 

Faculty, i in him the smallest abatement 

But I canned omit all mention oi the pretty, facile 
lyrics in which he paid tribute to his beloved 4ogs and 
birds. I refer, of <■■ • Poor 

Matthias," and to " Kaiser De Dachs- 

hund, Kaiser a mixture of Dachshund and collie. 



xiii.] THE AFTERMATH 101 

Matthias was a canary. " Geist's Grave," is by farthe 
best of the three, ami contains at least two excellent 
■stanzas — 

"That loving heart, that patient soul, 
Bad they indeed do longer Bpan, 
To run their course, and reach their goal, 
And read their homily to man '.' 

"That liquid, melancholy 
From whose pathetic. Boul-fed springs 
B ■ m'd Barging the Virgilian cry, 
The f tears in mortal things." 

The literary criticism produced by Mr. Arnold in 
the last ten years of his Life possesses the highesl 
interest ami value. It ranges over a greal variety of 
topics, it represents the writer's profoundesl mind, it 
comes next alter his poetry in a comparative estimate 
of what, he left to the world. In dealing with politics, 
or with theology, .Mr. Arnold never moved with the 
same ease as in the realm of pure literature, which 
his own. Be loved to take a book, like Mr. Stop- 
ford BrooE cellenl Primer of English Literature, 
and in criticising it to express his own opinions. He 
protested, quite justly, and by no means unnecessarily, 
againsl the foolish idolatry which admires without. 
discrimination everything in a volume labelled 
'"Shakespeare." For it is certain that if Shakespeare 
wrote all the plays and all the scenes attributed to 
him. he wrote some very poor stuff. But when Mr. 
Arnold says of him, not in substance for the first or 
last time, •• l!e is the richest, the most wonderful, the 
most powerful, the most delightful of poets; he is not 
altogether, nor even eminently, an artist" (Mixed 
Essays, 2nd Ed. p. 194), he provokes antagonism. 

M 



102 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

There is more in the sonnets than art could have put 
there. Hut poems more consummately artistic never 
came from a human brain and heart. It is, however, 
a fascinating essay, this on Mr. Brooke's Primer, and 
so is another in the same volume on Falkland, the 
famous Lord Falkland immortalised by Clarendon. 
Yet Falkland is perhaps not must judiciously praised 
(ami highly does Mr. Arnold praise him) by comparing 
him with Bolingbroke, whose levity and insincerity 
are not redeemed by the false glitter of his mere- 
tricious style. Mr. Arnold is severe on Burke for 
asking " Who now reads Bolingbroke?" But on this 
point the popular verdict is with Burke, and I am 
not prepared to say that it is wrong. Mr. Disraeli 
did his best for Bolingbroke's public character, and 
for the principles of ••The Patriot King." Hut, as 
Dr. Pusey said of Lord Westbury and eternal punish- 
ment, he had a personal interest in the question 
In "A French Critic on Milton" and '• A French 
Critic mi Goethe," Mr. Arnold took up the cudgels 
for the highly intelligent and respectable M. Scherer. 
M. Scherer, however, was dull, he was prosy, and 
even Matthew Arnold could not make him anything 
else. When this senator of France, and director 
of the Temps newspaper, tells us that Paradise 
Lost is "a false poem, a grotesque poem, a tire- 
some poem, - ' we can only smile compassionately, and 
wonder what resemblance to Sainte-Beuve Mr. Arnold 
Could find in M. Scherer. M. Scherer certainly seems 
to have misled Mr. Arnold on one point of some im- 
portance connected with Goethe. Goethe did indeed 
tell an Italian that "he thought the Inferno abomina- 
ble, the Purgatorio dubious, and the Paradise tire- 



xiii.] THE AFTERMATH 1(53 

some." But that was not Goethe's serious opinion. 
He made the remark as the surest way to get rid of 
an intolerable bore. Sic me servavit Apollo. Even 
Dante need not object to fulfilling the same functions 
as the god of light. How thoroughly Matthew Arnold 
himself appreciated Goethe, how much he learned from 
him, we all know. His final judgment (Mixed Essays, 
2nd Ed. p. 311) is contained in two short sentences. 
" It is by no means as the greatest of poets that he 
deserves the pride and praise of his German country- 
men. It is as the clearest, the largest, the most 
helpful thinker of modern times." No essay in this 
volume is more charming than the memorial tribute 
to George Sand. George Sand is, I believe, out of 
fashion in France. She is certainly not half so much 
read in England as she was twenty years ago. So far 
as her best and simplest books are concerned, this is 
a great loss. For, as Mr. Arnold so happily quotes 
from her, she gives better than almost any one else 
"le sentiment de la vie iddale, qui n'est autre que la vie 
normale telle que nous sommes appeUa a la connattre" 
— "the sentiment of the ideal life, which is none 
other than the normal life as we are destined to know 
it." George Sand never brought the ideal down to the 
level of the real. 

Oddly bound up with Irish Essays are a lecture 
to Eton boys on the value of the classics, and an 
ingenious disquisition on the French Play in London. 
At Eton, where Mr. Arnold believed, or pretended to 
believe, that a scientific training was the vogue, he 
tracked Greek life through many of its phases by 
means of the words tvrpa7reAos and eirpaireXia, to which 
perhaps the nearest English equivalents are " versatile" 



164 MATTHEW ARNOLD [cn.vr. 

and " versatility." How £irpa7rcXo?, a handy man, fame 
to nuMii ^3o)/xoAox°?) a lick-spitl Btory, and 

curiou . as Mr. Arnold points out, rind;.;, in 

whose Odes it tir.st occurs, uses it in ;i bad Bense, like 
St Paul, who applies it to fche jesting which is not 
convenient. In Plato, however, it sometimes has an 
unfavourable meaning too, and this Mr. Arnold omits 
to observe. Bu1 the value of his lecture lies in its 
fruitful an jestive comparison of Greek life with 

English. N<> man knew the classics hitter than 
Mr. Arnold. No man made a better use of his know- 

• •. Tli j on the French Play is interestdn 

many way-, not Leasl for the personal reminiscence 
with which he introduces the subject. " I remember," 
. •• how in my youth, after a Brst Bight of the 
divine 1 at the Edinburgh Theatre in the part of 

Hermione, I followed her to Paris, and for two months 
never missed one of her representations" < Irish Essays, 
Pop. Ed. i>. LSI). Oi ter that Mr. Arnold 

could not be expected to go into raptures over 
Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, and he docs not. 
"Something is wanting, or, at V aol present in 
sufficient force. ... It was here that Rachel was so 
great; she began, one Bays to oneself as one recalls hex 
image and dwells upon it. — she began almost where 
Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt ends" (page 153). 
But Mr. Arnold never saw Sarah Bernhardt in Hamlet. 
\ lin in this essay Mr. Arnold attacks Victor Hugo, 
and attacks him where, if he sins, he sins in excellent 
company. •• M. Victor 1 [ugo's brilliant gifl for versifica- 
tion is exercised within the limits of a form inadequate 
for true tragic poetry, and by its very presence excluding 
it" Q>age 164). That is very dogmatic criticism indeed. 



xiii.] THE AFTERMATH 105 

Mr. Arnold disliked the French Alexandrine, even as 
handled by such a master as Racine, and therefore 
he pronounced it inadequate for true tragedy. He 
would not have cared much for a critic-ism of Homer 
by a man who disliked hexameters, and thought them 
inadequate for epic poetry. At page 1GG he makes 
the acute remark that "we have no modern drama, 
because our vast society is not at present homogeneous 
enough." Nevertheless he pleads for a national 
theatre. We shall have a national drama first. Mr. 
Arnold was an old playgoer, and wrote some lively 
dramatic n for the Pail MaM Gazette in that 

name. But the enormous number of Englishmen who 
do not care for the play, and never go to it, would 
hardly like to he taxed for theatrical purposes. 

The second series of Essays in Criticism appeared 
after Mr. Arnold's death, with a Prefatory Note by 
Lord Coleridge. But they were collected by himself, 
and arc what he deliberately judged to be worthy of 
republication. They are nine in number, but the last 
three do not, I think, add much to the value of the 
collection. The first six, on the other hand, are equal, 
if not superior, to any other critical work of Mr. 
Arnold's. "The Study of Poetry/' with which the 
volume opens, was originally written for Mr. Humphry 
Ward's Selections from the English Poets. It contains 
Mr. Arnold's final and deliberate judgment upon the 
true nature of poetry. After quoting Aristotle's "pro- 
found observation" that poetry is both a more philo- 
sophical thing, and a more serious thing, than history, 
he says i page 121) that "the substance and matter of 
the best poetry acquire their special character from 
possessing, in an eminent degree, truth and serious- 



166 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

ness." But "the superior character of truth and 
seriousness, in the matter and Bubstanoe of the I 
poetry, is inseparable from the superiority of diction 
and movement marking its style and manner." Little 
can be added to this, and certainly nothing can be 
subtracted from it. Next to it, the most interesting 
part of the essay is the free ami candid estimate of 
Burns. This is the more welcome because, while he 

writing the paper, in November l ss ". he told his 

• rs, voL ii. p. bat Burns was w a beast 

with What would Mr. Arnold have 

thought of the Philistine who described Catullus as a 

t with splendid gleams? And yet Catullus, who 

t than Burns, is the poet whom, as the 

late Professor Bellar showed, Burns m embles. 

In his beautiful address on Milton, delivered at St. 
Margaret's « hurch, W< stminster, a few weeks before 

his death, Mr. An. .:<]. with truth, lour, and 

insight I 6 '. •• In our thousand 

readers, presently tfa .1! be millions, who know 

not a word of Greek and Latin, and will never learn 
those languages. If this host <-f readers are ever to 
gain any sense of the power and charm of the great 
poets of antiquity, their way to gain it is not through 
translations of the ancients, hut through the original 

. who has the like power and charm, 

he has the 1; ."* < »n!y a horn man 

of I could have written that. But when Mr. 

Arnold <iuot.-> from <i: friend, Br. Warton, the 

words, •• 1 1 •■ out,*' ami says that " m these 

four words is contained the whole history of Gray, 

both as a man and as a poet," he becomes fantastic. 
"What Dr. Warton D is that Gray was not com- 



xin.] THE AFTERMATH 107 

municative about the state of his own health. He 
was a copious letter-writer, and his letters are among 
the best in the language. If the amount of his port 1 v 
is comparatively small, it had a range wide enough 
to include the " Progress of Poesy/' the " Elegy in a 
Country Churchyard," and the political satires. To 
Keats, Mr. Arnold became justei as he grew older, 
and in this his final estimate he couples him, not with 
Maurice de Guerin, but with Shakespeare. This 
reminds one of Lord Young's comment on the remark 
that Paints, the Dorset poet, might be put on the 
same shelf with Burns. " It would have to be a long 
shelf," said the witty Judge. Put it is true that "no 
one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in 
expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his 
perfection of loveliness" (page 119). The essay on 
Wordsworth is so good, that to praise it is better than 
to criticise it, and to read it is better than either. But 
such a statement as that "the Excursion and the 
P 'ude, his poems of greatest bulk, are by no means 
Wordsworth's best work" (page L36) requires a justi- 
fication which Mr. Arnold does not give it. It would 
be difficult to find in any of Wordsworth's shorter 
pieces better verses than the lines on the Simplon 
Pass, or the | ■ beginning "Fabric it seemed of 

diamond and of gold." While, however. 1 cannot 
help thinking that Mr. Arnold exaggerates the prosi- 
ness of Wordsworth's prosaic passages, and dwells too 
much upon that familiar theme, he more than com- 
pensates for any trifling blemishes by such a noble 
sentence as this : " His expression may often be called 
bald, as, for instance, in the poem of Resolution and 
Independence ; but it is bald as the bare mountain tops 



168 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

are Laid, with a baldness which is full of grandeur." 
Mr. Arnold is readier to do Byron justice than must 
Wordsworthians are. It v. anyson that Words- 

worth prevented him from appreciating, not Byron. 

jo Car as one can judge, to be 

out of date new. It LS h rather than his 

poems which people read. Bui h ; .s "sincerity and 

the ph Inch Mr. Arnold qu 

from Mr. Swinburne, must ah •• acknowledged. 

The remaining a in this volume deal with 

Professor Dowden's L v . with the earlier 

writings of Count Tolstoi, and with the Diary of Amiel. 
Mr. Arnold was profoundly di- bed with the details 
of 9 with •• Godwin's house of 

sordid horror," with Byron's •• brutal selfishness," and 

:t. "What .. B world!" he exclaims 

naturally enough. To compare them with the Oriel 

Common Boom shows perhaps a lack in the Bense of 
proportion. They are more like the strange company 
who accompanied Candi his rambles Bui after 

Proft D '.den's Btrange apologetics, Mr. Arnold's 

rational morals and in of refinement are 

salutary and refreshing. To jay of Shelley as a poet 

that he is "a beautiful and in< I al angel, beating 

in the ?oid his luminous wings in vain," is imp. 

and 1 SUp] ' means something. but it doi ! QOl 

innt for the "Skylark," or "When the Lamp is 
Shattered," or the mighty "Ode to the West Wind." 

Mr. Arnold's analysis of Anna Kan nina is appreciative 

enough, and he would have thoroughly enjoyed 

m if he had lived to read it. But his 

mmendation that Count Tolstoi should h 

religiou and stick to literatun tngely from 



xiii.] THE AFTERMATH ICO 

the author of Literature and Dogma. No living writer 
has inculcated the teaching of Christ with more 
eloquence than Count Tolstoi. Of Amiel, it is no 
doubt true that he shines more in literary criticism 
than in mystic speculation. He could hardly shine 
less. P>ut what had Matthew Arnold to do with 
Amiel ? 



CHAPTER XIV 



l.i 3I0N 



3 October 18S-. Mr. Arnold, in an amusing 
. to Mr. Bftorley, Bpoi resignatioiL "I an- 

nounced yesterday at the < »tlic-o my intention of retir- 

fcer or Whitsuntide. Gladstone will w 
promote the author of Literature "ml Dogma if he can 
help it, ami meanwhile my life is drawing to an 
end, and I hare do wish t<> exi the Dane 

Death in an elementary /. M *,iL207). He 

did not, however, actually resign till the 30th of 
April L886, when he had been an Ens] for thirty- 

Mr. Gladstone did oot promote the author 
of J. id Dogma. But he offered him a pen- 

sion of two hundred and fifty pounds, M as a public 
recognition of Bervice to the poetry and literature of 
England." After some quite urn iry hesitation, 

Mr. Arnold a ted the offer. F< w men, to say 
nothing of poetry and literati.: t served the 

public more faithfully for a remuneration which at 
no time equalled t! ry of a police magistrate 

or a County Court judge. If he < 1 i < 1 not work so hard 
as some of his colleagues at the routine and drud 
of inspection, his reports are the most luminous, the 
most interesting, and the most tive that have 

been issued from the Education Department. A 
collection of these Reports from 1852 to L882 was 

170 



chap, xiv.] CONCLUSION 171 

published by Messrs. Maemillan in 1889, with an in- 
troduction from the pen of the late Lord Sandford, so 
long Secretary to the Education Office. 

In the autumn of 1885, Mr. Arnold was sent to 
inquire into the working of elementary education in 
Germany, France, and Switzerland. lie was especially 
directed to report upon the payment of fees by the 
parent, by the municipality, and by the State. This 
Report is not quite so good a piece of composition as 
its predecessors, and there are signs that it was written 
in a hurry. His own recommendations are character- 
istic. He thought that the balance of argument was 
against free education. But he held that it had better 
be given because the want of it put a powerful weapon 
in the hands of the agitator. This is thoroughly and 
ntiallv Whig. He concluded by urging mice more 
that secondary education should be organised, as it 
seems likely at last to be. Free education was 
adopted three years after his death. 

This Report was Mr. Arnold's last bit of official 
work. After his resignation he used his freedom to 
write more on politics, and his pen was never idle. 
His general health was good, though he had been 
warned of hereditary weakness in the heart which 
made any sudden or violent exertion dangerous. 
While at Liverpool with his wife on Sunday the 
loth of April 1888, he ran to catch a tramcar, and 
died in a moment. He had gone to meet his elder 
daughter on her way home from the United States, 
and in the delighted expectation of seeing her he 
passed away. Few knew anything of his malady, 
and no one looked less like an invalid. He was sixty- 
five at the time of his death, but he might easily have 



172 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

passed for a much younger man. Hia eye was not 
dim, nor his natural force abated. Always full of 
gaiety and good-humour, he had the high spirits of a 
boy, and the serene conteutment of a philosopher. 
Keenly as he appreciated the enjoyments of life, being 
fastidious in taste and something of an epicure, his 
wants were few and soon satisfied, lie was the most 
sociable, the most lovable, the most companionable of 
men. Perhaps the function in which he shone li 
was that of a public speaker. I only heard him once, 
but the occasion was sufficiently remarkable to be 
worth notice. It was the Jubilee of the ( Ixford Union 
in 1873. Matthew Arnold had never, so far as I am 
aware, anything to do with the Union. But almost 
: v Oxford man in the front rank of public life, 
except Mr. < Hailstone, attended the dinner, including 
Lord chancellor Selborne, who presided, Archbishop 
Tait, Cardinal Manning, Lord Salisbury, and Sir John 
Duke Colerid Mr. Arnold was to respond for Lit- 

erature, which had been proposed by that accomplished 
orator. Dr. LiddOD. But whether he was unwell, or 
whether he dislike. 1 Liddon's urbane irony, he replied 
in a single sentence rather too sa; Eor the occa- 

sion, and uot worth reproducing at this distance of 
time. 

It is impossible to read through Mr. Arnold's books 
and letters without feeling that he was a good man 
in the best sense of that term. His character was a 
singularly engaging one, and it rested upon solid 
virtues which are less common than amiability. A 
better son, husband, father, there could not be. His 
moral standard was much the same as Dr. Arnold's, 
and how high that was everybody knows. In reli- 



xiv.] CONCLUSION 173 

gious matters he departed very widely from the school 
of thought in which he had been reared. That he was 
himself a sincerely religious man, and deeply inter- 
ested in religious questions, it is impossible to doubt. 
But his religion was so peculiar that it can scarcely 
have much permanent influence upon mankind. Chris- 
tianity without miracles, and without dogmatic theol- 
ogy, is not only practicable, but has sufficed for some 
of the best Christians that ever lived. It is probably 
the religion of most educated laymen in the Church of 
England to-day. But Christianity without a personal 
God, without anything more definite than a tendency 
not ourselves which makes for righteousness, seems to 
have neither past nor future. It is, in the language 
of the book which, with all his learning, Mr. Arnold 
knew best, salt which has lost his savour. Mr. Ar- 
nold's unfortunate habit of quoting the Bible in a 
translation of his own deprived the passages so ren- 
dered of their hold upon the English mind. His con- 
tributions to pure literature, on the other hand, seem 
secure of a permanent place in the shelves and the 
minds of Englishmen. Mr. Arnold, as we have seen, 
had his critical limitations. He excluded too much. 
But judging his critical work, as talent should be 
judged, at its best, one can hardly overpraise it. It is 
original, penetrating, lucid, sympathetic, and just. Of 
all modern poets, except Goethe, he was the best critic. 
Of all modern critics, with the same exception, he was 
the best poet. No one, not even Mr. Lecky, more 
abounds in telling and appropriate quotations. As 
a poet he ranks only below the greatest of all. 
Though he felt the influence of "Wordsworth, he was 
no imitator. He was a voice, not an echo. A popular 



174 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

poet, as Byron was, as Tennyson is, he never -was, and 
is never likely to be. He may almost be said to have 
written for University men, and, as we may say nowa- 
days, for University women. As a critic he was in- 
capable of obscurity or of inaccuracy. His scholarship 
was as sound as it was brilliant. He had the instinct 
of the journalist, and was never at a loss for an 
appropriate heading. 

Matthew Arnold's appearance was both impressive 
and agreeable. He was tall, of commanding presence, 
with black hair, which never became grey, and blue 
eyes. He was shortsighted, and Ids eye-glass gave him 
a false air of supercilious tccentuated by the clever 

caricaturist of Vanity Fair. In reality he was the most 
genial and amiable of men. But he had a good deal of 
manner, which those who did not know him mistook for 
imption. It was nothing of the kind, but a mixture 
of old-fashioned courtesy and comic exaggeration. Mr. 
Arnold was always willing to tel] a Btory, or to join 
in a laugh, against himself. Roughness or rudeness he 
could not bear. He was essentially a polished man of 
the world. He never gave himself airs, or seemed 
conscious of any superiority to those about him. < !on- 
Biderate politeness to young and old, rich and poor, 
obscure and eminent, was the practice of his life. His 
standard was the standard of a Christian gentleman, his 
models in that respect were such men as Newman and 
Church. lb- enjoyed not only, with the exception of 
his hereditary complaint, good health and good spirits, 
but one of those happy temperaments which diffuse and 
radiate satisfaction. No one could be cross or bored 
when Matthew Arnold was in the room. He was 
always amusing, and always seemed to look at the 



xiv.] CONCLUSION 175 

bright side of things. Naturally sociable, and in a 
modest way convivial, he took pleasure both in the 
exercise and in the acceptance of hospitality. lie 
knew good wine from bad, and was not ashamed to 
admit the knowledge. His talk was witty, pointed, 
and often irresistibly droll. Although public speaking 
did not suit him, he had a very flexible voice, admir- 
ably fitted for the dramatic rendering of a story, or 
for the purposes of satirical criticism. He could be 
very dogmatic in conversation, but never aggressive 
or overbearing. For a poet he was surprisingly prac- 
tical, taking a lively interest in people's incomes, the 
rent of their houses, the produce of their gardens, ami 
the size of their families. He had none of "Words- 
worth's contempt for gossip, and his father's strenuous 
earnestness had not descended to him. "Habitually 
indulging a strong propensity to mockery," as Macaulay 
says of Halifax, he was never ill-natured, and never 
willingly gave pain. He would make fun of the people 
he loved best, but he always did it good-humouredly. 
His theoretical belief in the principle of authority had 
little influence upon his practice. Mr. Arthur Benson, 
in his portly biography of his father, tells us how the 
author of Literature and Dogma, on being confronted 
with some paternal dictum, replied with his confiden- 
tial smile, "Dear Dr. Arnold was not infallible." Mr. 
Arnold's smile was like a touch of nature, it made the 
whole world kin. 

It is not unnatural to compare or contrast Matthew 
Arnold with his two great contemporaries, Tennyson 
and Browning. Tennyson was born thirteen years, 
Browning eleven years, before him. Browning sur- 
vived him by a year, Tennyson by four years. Tenny- 



176 MATTHEW ARNOLD [chap. 

son stands almost alone in literature as a poet, and 
nothing but a poet, throughout his long life. All his 
scholarship, all his knowledge, all the speculative 
power of his wonderful mind, went into poetry, and 
into poetry alone. Browning, though he had no pro- 
fession, was as constantly in the world as Tennyson 
was constantly out of it. I If lived two lives, the 
imaginative and the actual, with equal /est. Matthew 
Arnold was as sociable as Browning, and as genuine 
a poet. But h«' had to work for his living, and either 
the Education Department or the critical faculty almost 
dried up the poetic vein. It was not that the quality 
of his verse deteriorated, as the quality of Browning's 
did, and as the quality of Tennyson's did not. What 
little poetry he wrote at the end of his life was good, 
and in the case of "Westminster A.bbey," very good. 
Bui he ceased as a poet to bo productive. The enei 
of his mind were drawn into politics, into theology, 
into literary criticism. There was much in him of 
his father's missionary zeal. He longed to make the 
world better, though by other means and in other 
directions than Dr. Arnold's. His spiritual father 
was Wordsworth, from whose grave his own poetry 
may be said to have sprung. Wordsworth lived to 
be much older than Mr. Arnold, and, though his prose 
is exquisite, there is not much of it. In him, too, 
great poet as he was. the imagination dwindled and 
decayed. After middle age he produced little that 
lives. Tennyson remained to the end as magical, as 
imaginative, as musical, as he had ever been. YVe 
cannot estimate Matthew Arnold's greatness if we 
separate his poetry from his criticism. His theologi- 
cal and political writings prove his versatility without 



xiv.] CONCLUSION 177 

adding much to his permanent reputation. It is as 
the poet and critic, the man who practised what he 
preached, that he survives. He was an incarnate con- 
tradiction of the false epigram that the critics are 
those who have failed in literature and art. 

The great fault of his prose, especially of his later 
prose, is repetition. He had, like Mr. Brooke in 
Middlemarch, a marked tendency to say what he had 
said before. His defect as a poet was the imperfec- 
tion of his ear for rhythm. Bnt, as Johnson said of 
Goldsmith, "enough of his failings; he was a very 
great man.'' Such poetry as Mycerinus, such prose as 
the Preface of the Essays in Criticism, are enough to 
make a man a classic, and to preserve his memory 
from decay. 



N 



IXDEX 



" Absence," 38. 

Act of Uniformity, 123. 

Addison, 81, 83. 

"Adonais," 2, 84. 
■Airy, Fairy Lilian" (Tenny- 
son's), 74. 

"Alaric at Rome," quotation 
from, 10-11, 13. 

Alnricat Rome, and Other Pv< in*. 
20. 

Alexandrines, French, 53, 83, 165. 

American Civil War, 69. 

Anuhijy of Religion (Butler's), 
142. ' 

Anderson, Professor, 62. 

"Andromeda" (Kingsley's), 62. 

Anna Karenina (Tolstoi's), 168. 

Annals of (he Four Masters, 98. 

Apostles' Creed, 138. 

Aristophanes, 52. 

Aristotle, 52, 53, 122, 1G5. 

Arminianism, Church of England 
stronghold of, 1. 

Arminius von Thunder-ten- 
Tronckh, 125, 126-129. 

Arnold, Matthew, his birth at 
Laleham, 6; his father, 6-10; 
his mother, 6 ; goes with family 
toRugby.fi; sent to Winchester, 
7 ; return to Rugby, 7 ; educa- 
tion at Rugby, 7-11 ; enters 
Balliol College, Oxford, 11; 
Newdigate Prize, 13; Fellow- 
ship at Oriel, 14; Classical 
Master at Rugby, 10; Private 
Secretary to Lord Lansdowne, 
17 ; The' Strayed Reveller, <n,,l 
Other Poems, 20: appointed 
an Inspector of Schools, 30; 

17 



marriage, 31 ; Empedocles on 
Etna, and Other Poems, 32; 
" Sohrab and Kustuni," 45; 
Poems, second series, 18 ; 
elected Professor of Poetry at 
Oxford, 51 ; takes a house in 
Chester Square, 66; visit to 
the Continent, 58; " On trans- 
lating Homer," CI : A French 

Eton, 69; Eseayein Criticism, 
74; begins work in Paris, 92; 
Lectures on Celtic Literature, 
'X>; New Poems, 99; ceased to 
be Professor of Poetry, !•*!; 
death of his eldest son, 115; 
tltttre and Anarchy, 115; 
St. Paul and Protestantism, 
121 ; Friendship's Garland, 
125; death of bis second son, 
132; settles at Pain's Hill.Cob- 
bam, Surrey, 132; Literature 
and Dogma, 133; God and the 
Bible, 13:); Mixed Essays, 147; 
Irish Essays, 151; visit to 
America, 154; Discourses in 
America, 155; Essays in Criti- 
cism, second series, lfi5 ; resigns 
Inspectorship of Schools, 170; 
pension, 170; death, 171. 

— His literary rank, 1-5; his 
politics, 3, 23, 57, fiO, 61, 93, 94, 
114, 145-158, 161, 171 ; his phil- 
osophy, 113-129 ; his theology, 
130-144, 161, 173; views on 
education, 67-71, 91, 92, 106- 
112, 114; character, 172, 173; 
personal characteristics, 174, 
175. 

Arnold, Poems by Matthew 
(second series) , 48-50. 

9 



180 



INDEX 



Arnold, Edward, 1B6. 

Arnold, Miss Fanny (sister). 68, 
L39, 154, 166. 

Arnold, Mrs. Frances Lacy 
Wightman (wife), 31, 120, 132, 
154, ill. 

Arnold, Mrs. Mary Penrose i Mat- 
thew Arnold's mother), 6, 9, 18, 
19, 73,92, 93, 94, 120. 

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 3, 6-10, 11, 
11. 16, 19,28, 94, 103, 112, 133, 
172, 173, 175, 17>;. 

Arnold, William (brother), 66. 

"Artemis Prologises" (Brown- 
ing's), 22, ' 

•• Arnndines Cam!," 17. 

AstoD Clinton, 7_*. 

" Atalanta in Calydon," 54, 92. 

Athanasian Creed, I 

Atbenseom club, 50. 

Autobiography i Mr-. B 

159. 

B 

" Bacchanalia, or The Ni w A 
102 ; quotation trom, l 1 

Bacon, 77, 150. 

•• Balder Dead," 48, 50, • 

Balfour, Mr. A. J., 116, 149. 

BaUada from ll r d tt i Bi 
.i i: Bode's), 51. 

Ballioll >rd,ll-13,16. 

Barnes, William, 167. 

/; irry Lyndon (Thackeray's) ,69. 

B £ium, Arnold's visit to 
Foreign Assistant Commis- 
sioner on Education, 5S 

B "ii. Mr. Arthur. 17.". 

Bentley, 63. 

B Mihar.lt, Sarah, 164. 

Biblical Criticism, 3, 68, 88, 131, 
132, 137, 138, 141. 

" Bishop and the Philosopher, 
The," I 

Bismarck, <l t. 

Blake. William. 111. 

Bode, Rev. John Ernest, 51. 
Boliu^broke, 162. 



Bonn University, 149. 

Bossuet, 80. 

B wood, Wiltshire, 18. 

t. Mr. John, 56,93, 117. 149. 
British Quart* rly /.' ■ . 79. 
Brooke, Mr. Btopford, 94, 161. 
Browning, Mrs., 27, 55. 
Browning, Robert, 20,22, 32,83, 

43, 65, 91, 99, 176, 176. 
Brunelleschi, 93. 
Bryce, Mr., 157. 
Bnckland, Rev. John, 6. 
Buloz, M., 7'.'. 
Banyan, '.'7, 119. 
Burials Bill, 146, 147. 
" Buried Life, The," 
Burke, 3, 71, 76 78, 80, 151, 152, 

162. 
Pun; 166. 

Butler, Bishop, 123, 124, 134,141- 

143. 

• n, Lord, 10,11,19, 32,33, 73, 
168, 171. 



Cairns, Lord, 1 lv 

lis Sands." 101. 

Icles," songs of, 84-86. 

Calvin, 121 12 

Cambridge, University of, 13-1. 

Camoens, 18 

Campbell, Mr. Dykes, 73. 

Candid* , 125, 

Canning, Lord, ! 

i lanticle of St. Francis, 86. 

Carlyle, 17, 39, 54, 76. 

Caroline, Queen, 1 1-'. 

. I rd . • ; 1 . 
I hollc Emancipation, 9, 152. 
Catholics, 106, 120, 122, 149, 150. 
Catullus, 166. 

■ 57 
Celtic literature 
r Maurice de Guerin), 

81. 
Chamberlain, Mr., 116. 
Chapman, 03. 



INDEX 



181 



Characteristics (Shaftesbury), 

142. 
Charles II., 123. 
Chateaubriand, 66. 
( Ihertsey, 18. 
Ckilde Harold, 10. 
Christian Retru mbrancer, 48. 
"Church of Brou, The," 47. 
Church, Dean, 14, 174. 
Church of England, 12, 16, 67, 

106, 121, 123, 124, L32, 117. 17:;. 
Church of England, Essay on 

Puritanism in, 121, 123-125. 
Church and Religion, Last Es- 
says on, 141—143. 
Church of Rome, 124. 
Cicero, 113. 
Clarendon. 162. 
Clerkeuwell Explosion, 114. 
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 2, 12, 14, 

21, 23, 15, 46, 62, 66, 100. 
Cobden, 93. 

Code, The Revised 1 1862), 67, 68. 
Colenso, Bishop, 3, 68, 69. 
Coleridge, Lord, 10, 12, 14,23,48, 

73, 163, L55, 166, 172. 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 53,87. 
Collects of the English Church, 

79, 
Conington, Professor, 92. 
"Consolation," 39. 
Constantino, 89. 
Contemporary Review, 139. 
Conk, Eliza, 147. 
"Copyright," Essay, 153. 
Corn Laws, 10. 
Cor nl, ill Magazine, 96, 121. 
Cowley, Lord, 58. 
Creweian Oration. 68, 91. 
"Cromwell" (poem), 13. 
Culture and Anarchy, 115-119, 

121. 
"Cymbeline," 100. 

D 

Daily Telegraph, 75, 114. 
Dante, 163. 



De Gue'rin, Mademoiselle, 84. 

De Gue'rin, Maurice, 81, 167. 

De Guerins, 74, 81, 82. 

De Rothschild, Sir Anthony, 72. 

De Rothschild, Lady, 113. 

"Decade, The" (Debating So- 
ciety), 14. 

Deceased "Wife's Sister Bill, 129. 

"Democracy," essay, 60. 

Denison, Archdeacon, 30. 

Denison, Speaker, ( .»5. 

Derby, Lord, 61, 72. 

Descartes, 140. 

Deutsch, 113. 

Diary of Amiel, 168. 

Discourses in America, 155, 156. 

Disestablishment, 135, 147. 

Disraeli, Mr. (Lord Beaeonsfield), 
69, 72. 95, 162. 

Dissenters, 5, 23, 79, 106, 117, 
118, 121. 123, in;, 147. 

"Dover Beach," quotation from, 
101, 102. 

Dowden, Professor, 168. 

Doyle, Sir Francis, 91. 

Dresdrn, !»:;. 

Dryden, 19, 77. 

Dublin, Trinity College, 149. 

"Dunciad" (Pope's), 63. 

Duomo, Florence, 93. 

E 

Ecce Homo, 139. 

Eccentricities of Genius (Major 
Pond's), 154. 

Eckermann, 134. 

lilcole Normale, 108. 

Edinburgh Philosophical Institu- 
tion, 142. 

Edinburgh Review, 79. 

Edinburgh Theatre, 164. 

Education Department, 30, 106, 
110, 170, 171, 176. 

Egypt, 151. 

Eisteddfod, 97. 

" Elegy in a Country Church- 
yard " (Gray's), 167. 



182 



INDEX 



Elizabethan Age, 151. 
Elwes, Mr. Robert, 89. 
Empedodet on Etna, and Other 

Poems, 3'.M1. 
Empedocles on Etna, 33-3fl, 42, 

55, 99. 
Endowed Schools Act, 120. 
Endowed School Commissioners, 

70. 
England and the Italian Ques- 

ti">i, 57. 
English P< ctions i 

the (Ward's), 165. 
Epictetui 
■• Equality," essay, 147, 148. 

\ond (Thackeraj 

y "/i M 
\y» <m<l 1 . iji. 

•v.* In I < .: 

177 

tyj in CriHcitm, s* 
rii 

. 70, 109, ' 
"Eton, A Prench," I 
Euripides, 52. 
l tngelicals, 121. 
•• Evangeline" Dgfellov 

92. 
lid, 8, 131. 
ni/u r, The, 19. 
itreton (Wordsworth's), 167. 



"Fragment of an 'Antigone,'" 
22. 

France, Arnold's visit to, as For- 
eign Assistant Commissioner 
on Educa t ion, 68 ; Inquiry into 
working of elementary educa- 
tion in, 171. 

France, Popular Education in, 
80. 

Fraser's Magazine, 104. 

Frederick the Great, 94. 

French academy, 80, Bl. 

French criticism, 78, 79. 

French education, 69-71, 107-110, 
ill. 

French language, 107, 108, 111. 
" French Plaj In London," essay, 

164. 
French people, 58, !'3, 156. 
French scholars, 97. 

Fr idncation, 171. 

ndship'i Garland, 125-129. 
" From Baatez to August," 

I 
Fronde, J. A., 11, 54. 



■■ Faded Let " 50. 

Falkland, Lord, 162. 

•• Farewell, A," 

Fenian^, 11 1. 

Fitch, Blr Joshua, 107, 181, I 

Florence, 98, 100. 

Fontanes, M . 181, 151. 

Forster, W. P., 60, 61, I 

Porster, Mrs. (Arnold's sister), 

■"•1. 15, 50, 54, 59, "l 
Fourth Gospel, 130, 138, 

141. 
Fox How, 6. 



urene swine, 137. 
He, '.»;. 
Garnett, Richard, 20. 

160, 161. 
Genoa, I Nike of, 120. 

man education, 108, 110-112. 
German Ratlonalh 
Germany, Arnold's visit to, 
as Foreign Com- 

missioner "ii I-'.. 1 neat inn, 92; 
Inquiry Into working "f ele- 
mentary education In, 171. 

MIS, 131, 

Gibbon, 39, B3. 

Gladstone, Mr., 9, 58, 61, 84, 72, 
96, 96, 120, 130, 1.1, 11", 142, 
146, 16 J, 170, 172. 

'• <;i<-:im " (Tennyson's), 21. 

< llouoester, Bishop of, 133. 

Godandth* 139-141. 



INDEX 



183 



Godwin, 168. 

Goethe, 4, 32, 33, 39, 73, 85, 88, 

134, 136, 163, 163, 173. 
"Goethe, A French Critic on," 

162. 
Goldsmith, 77, 177. 
"<k>rgo,"85. 

nils. The, 130, 138. 
Grammar of Ass< nt i Newman's), 

"Grande Chartreuse, Stanzas 

from the," 104, 105. 
Grant, General, 154, 156, 157. 
Grant, Doff, Mr., 145. 
Gray, 34, 166, 167. 

ace, 32, 51. 
Greek drama, 43, 44. 52, 53. 
Q eeh language, ill. 138, 166. 

k life, 163, 164. 

nv. i. Frederick, 125. 

Guest, Lady Charlotte, 98. 

II 

Hamilton, Sir William, 122. 
Hampden, Dr., 9. 
Harnack, Professor, i U. 
Harrison, Frederic, 130. 
Harrow, 7". .v.. in;., n:,. ijn. 

132. 
Hawkins, 1 >r., 7. 14. 
Hawtrey, Dr., 21,62, 63. 
Hawtrey, Mr. Btephen, 69. 
■■ Hayswater Boat, The," l'". 

Ha/liit. 74. 

Headington Hill, •_'. 

Elebraism, '■'<, 121. 

Heine, 18, 19, 7:.. 82, 84,85. 

" Heine's Grave," 19, 103, 104. 

Hellenism, 3, 113, 121. 

Hermione, 164. 

Herodotus, '-'4. 

Holland, Arnold's visit to, as 
Foreign Assistant Commis- 
sioner on Education, 58. 

Home Rule, 150, 151, 156-158. 

Homer, 17, 22. 29, 46, 48, 69, 61- 
66, 75, 125, 165. 



" Homer, Last Words on trans- 

lating," f,i, 66. 
Horace, 3, 83, 84, 124. 
Hugo, Victor, S3, 156, 164, 165. 
Hungarians, 57. 
Huxley, Professor, 107. 
Hyde Park Rioters, 114. 
"Hymn to Adonis," 85, 86. 



Idylls of the King (Tennyson's), 

59. 
"11 Pen8eroso" (Milton's), 21. 

I | Homer's), 62-64. 
In Memoriam (Tennyson's), 

7:;. 
•■ In Memory of the late Edward 

Quillinan, Esq.," 48. 
" Incompatibles, The," essay, 

152, 153. 
Inferno (Dante's), 162. 
'• introduction to Collected 

Poems," 42-45, 62. 
Ipswich, 151. 
Irish Catholic University, 148- 

150. 
'• Irish Catholicism and British 

Liberalism," essay, 149. 
Irish Church, 111. 117. 
Irish Essays, 150, 151-153, 163. 
Irish Land Acts, 146, 152. 
Irish Melodies (Moore's), 27. 
Irish question, 149, 150, 151-153, 

157, 158. 
Irving, sir Henry, 155. 
••Isabella" (Keats's),44. 
Israel's Restoration, The Great 

Prophecy of, 131, 132. 
Italian Government, 119, 120. 
Italy, 57, «J2, 93, 107. 



•J. lib, Sir Richard, 64. 
Jenkyns, Dr., 12. 
Jones, Owen, 97, 98. 
Jouhert, 81, 86, 87. 



184 



INDEX 



Jowett, Dr.. 12, 63, 124, I 
Judaism, 113, 123. 

K 

'■ Kaiset Dead," 160. 
Kay-8hnttle worth, Sir Jam* 
Keats, 2, 22, 14,63,74, SI, 82, 167. 

jsley, Charles, 21, 54, 
Kipling, 1 : 1 1 > I > ard, 119. 

Klh-Ilrli, 1 1 

L 

irdaire, 70 
I • ham, 6, 13, 

LanadoTt di . 
l ;:.. 

tdamia " i Wordsworth 'b), 
26. 

t Word, The," 102. 
Latin, 107, 112, ll 
Land, archbishop, I 
/. 

■■ I. ji. 

Lecky, Mr., 

/ 

/.• • ■' // •' •■• 

60 
/.• • 

17. '.i 66. 
Leigh too, Archbishop, 1 10. 

77. 

s Ann.; 
146, 168, 170. 

/ 
Bui k< . 77. 
i ■ 1 1. nrj . 64. 

Liddon, I h\, 172. 
I 
- pford Brooke's . 94. 
- ley (Doi 
Lincoln, President, 167. 
"Lines written in Kensington 

Gardens," 
Lingen, Lord, l'* 1 



" Literature, The Mn.lcrn Ele- 
ment in," 51, 52. 

131 , 1 
I, 14". 144. 169, 170, a 
I. ' nature, Prinu r tliah 

(8topford Brooke's), 161, ll 
Livy. 131. 

London, University «.f. 112. 
Long, Mr.. 90. 

gfellow, 21, I 
Lowe, Mr. Robert, 67, 68. 
Lncan, 40. 

134. 
Lut: 7, 122, l-l. 

i 
I :i, Lord, 45, 114. 

M 

i y Charlotte 

Macaalaj . Lord, 11, 17. l- 
126, 146, 17.".. 

Maine, sir Henrj 

rdinai, 172. 
M ircus \xa ■ Llfl 

M irtineau, Dr. Jan 117. 

Mam lerick, ] 

• M i " (Tennyson's) 1 1 

V M irons aorelii 

• . I • 1, 11. 
morial \ 

• Merman, The Forsaken, ".27. 

92. 
Milan, 

Mill. James, 142. 
Mill, -i - 58, 122, 117. 
" Mill on Liberty, 
Milt. .n. •_'. 20, 21, M. 77. 100, 117. 
159, 160, 162, 166. 

• Milton, A French Critic on," 
162. 

/.», 147-151. 161-162. 



INDEX 



185 



Moberly, Dr., 7. 

Modern Painters (Ruskin's), 50. 

Moliere, 156. 

Moore, Thomas, 27, 98. 

•■ Morality," 41. 

Morley, Mr. John, 149, 170. 

Morley, Mr. Samuel, 153. 

Mailer, Max, 13, 

Murray's Magazi ■■ . 166, 187. 

M</ Nov '. 16. 

"Mycerinus," 24 -26, 177. 

Myvyrit 

N 

Napoleon, Emperor Louis, 57, 58. 
New Pot in*, 99-106. 
•■ New sir.-. is. The," 27. 
New York. i:.4. 

rcastle, Duke of, 61, 67. 
Newdigate Prize, 13, 91. 
Newman, Francis, 63. 
Newman, John Henrj .11, 22, 63, 

87, lis. 124, l.-.J. 171. 
Nicene Cn ed, I 

Nineteenth Century, 14."., 166, 168. 

oon/ormiet, newspaper, 117. 

Nonconformists. Sa Dissenters. 

umbers, ox the Majority and 

the Remnant," essay <>m, 1">">, 

166. 

O 

Obermann. 39, <*'>, 131. 

" Obermann, Stanzas in Memory 
of til.- Author of," 39. 

O'Curry, Eugene 

1 1- to the West Wind " (Shel- 
ley's), 84. 

Odyssey, 63, 61. 

"On the Rhine, "quotation from, 
37. 

"One Word More" (Brown- 
ing's), 21. 

Oriel College, Oxford, 12, 14, 168. 

Orpheus, 29. 

Oxford, 2, 7. 11-15, 30, 47, 67. 68, 
72, 75, 100, 101, 108, 116, 118, 
122, 142, 154, 172. 



Oxford Movement. SVe Tracta- 
rianism. 

I txford Union. 172. 

Oxford, University College, 12. 

P 
Pall Mall Gazetti . 125, 166. 
Palmerston, Lord, 68, 72, 93, 

94. 
Pantheism, 40, vi-i. 
Pan (Browning's), 20, 33. 

Paradiso (Dante's), 162. 
Paradise Lout, 162. 
Paris, University of, 108. 
Parliament, 146. 
" Parting," 37, 38, 55. 

.1. 1 13. 
Pattison, Mark, li. r_>. 78. 
Peel, sir Robert, hi. hi. 
Pendennti (Thackeraj 's), 69. 
Pentateuch, »i.s. 
Pericles, 51. 
Petronius, 89. 
Phkdre (Racine's), 83. 
"Philistines," 75, 76,78,84, 116, 

lis. 

Phrynichus, 44. 
Piedmont, 58. 

Pindar. 1C4. 

Pitt, !M. 

Plato, 1,8, 90, 122, 125, 140, 155, 

164. 
"Poesy, Progress of" (Gray's), 

35, 167. 
Poles, 57. 

Polycarp, 89. 

Pond, Major, 154. 

"Poor Matthias," 161. 

Pope, 63, 64, 83, K4. 

"Praxinoe," 86. 

"Prelude" (Wordsworth's), 40, 

167. 
Prince Consort, 68. 
Procter, Adelaide, 66. 
"Progress," 41. 

Protestants, 122, 149, 150. 
Prussia, 57, i»4, 110, 111, 125. 



186 



INDEX 



Purgatorio, 162. 
Posey, Dr., 162. 



Quarterly !{■ 79, 113. 



"Babb 

Rachel (actress), 164. 

I; 5 I, 16S. 

sir Walter, 51. 

BUI, 148. 
114. 
1'.'. 
Benai 

■ rt upon Bchools and Dn 

mtinent, 107, 108. 
tblic (Plato's), 124, : 
liescat," it. 
■ !;• ^nation," - 
" Resolution and Independerj 
(Wotdsworth'a LI 
l . 

/,' ■■ "'■ - /■ •: 78 ;;». 

i: tertson, I derick, 94. 

Samuel, 
Roman Empire, • 

ate Gabriel 
•v.tv-ll. l'.. 16, i. L06, 

L09. 

Rugby Chapel," quotation 
fron - 
Raskin, John, 4, 71 

Rossell, Lord John, : 145. 

RoBsell, Mr. I 17. 116, 125, 

ISO, L46, U 

91 \ i rtmi 

Balnte-Bem 86, 7.°.. B1 

162. 

- .mt Brandan," 101. 
Si Francis, - 
St. Janu i, i " 
St. Margaret's Church, v. 

minster, 1(56. 



St. Paul an*! Protestantism, 121- 

123, 131. 
St. Paul. 121-123, 136, 137, 164. 
St. Peter, 159. 

Baintsbury, Professor, 43, B2, 130. 
Bala, George Augustus, 125, 126. 
Balisbury, Lord, 139, 157, 

172. 
Band, George, B2, L63. 
Bandiord, Lord, 171. 
Bchen r, M., 162. 
"Scholar Gipsy, The," 13, 47. 
i"i. 

Bchools Inquiry Commlssioni 

Science of < Origins, 
Scotland, Schools "f. 108. 
• i.l Empire, 2 
I'lary Education, 1 IB, 
151. 
Selbomi • bancellor, 1TJ. 

Sellar, Pr» 166. 

incour, 39 I 

- iration, 

aon "ti tin' Mount, 137. 
Settled Land Act, 1 18 

rp, John Campbell, 18. 
Shakespeare, 22, 23, 5'.>, 

77. 145, 161, 162, 
Shelli 

SllHt 

"Sick Kin- in Bokhara, The," 

Sion Collegi 1 1 ■ 

- j lark ' (8helle3 

th, Mr. George, 96, 115. 
Smith, Gold win, 78, 122, 1 iJ. 
Sin i t li and Elder, 115. 

- irab and Rustum," !»'•, 48, 4!». 

Sophocles, l. - 1.51, 86. 

Sorreze, 70. 

Bouthey, 

i. 120. 
Spectator, 94 



LS'DEX 



187 



Spencer, Herbert. 92. 

Spinoza, I J, 88, 89. 

Staines, 6, 18. 

Stanley, Dean, 7, 8, 12, 23, 69, 
159. 

Sterne. 19. 

Strangford, Lord. '.Ki. 

Btrasburg University, 149. 

Strayed Reveller, and Other 
nu, The, 20-29. 

•'Study of Poetry, The." 165-167. 

Sulpicius, '■>'■>■ 

Swift. Dean, 19, 77, 118. 

Swinburne, Mr.. 27, 32, 37, 100, 
168. 

Switzerland, Arnold's visit to, as 
Foreign Commissioner on Edu- 
cation, 58 ; Inquiry into work- 
ing of elementary education in, 
171. 

" Switzerland." poem, 38, 101. 



Tacitus, 89, 137. 

Tait. Dr., 16, 172. 

Talmud. 113. 

Tatliain. Miss Emma, 84. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 80. 

Temple, I m-., in, .~>i, 66. 
p$, newspaper, L62. 

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 13, 20, 
32, 59, 65, 7:;. 71. 100, 
L68, 17M7>;. 

Thackeray, 69. 

Theocril i, 85, 86, 100. 

Thompson, Dr., 63. 

Thucydides, 8, 51. 

"Thyrsis,"2, 13; quotation from, 
100-101. 

Timet, The, 79. 

" Tithonus " (Tennyson's), 74. 

"To an Independent Preacher," 
23, 37. 

"To a Gipsy Child by the Sea- 
shore," 27. 

"To a Republican Friend," 23, 
24. 



"To the Hungarian Nation," 

quotation from, 19. 
Tolstoi, 168, L69. 
Tom Brown's School Days, 7. 
Toulouse Lyceum, 69, 70. 
Trad sc, 118. 
Tractarianism, .'?, 9, 11. L3. 
Tructatu* Tfu ologico-PolitictU 

(Spinoza's), 89. 
Tnv.-lyan, Sir George, 125. 
Tribune, New York, 154. 
Trinity College, Dublin, 149. 
"Tristram and Iseult," 36, 37. 
Tubingen School, The. :;. 
Turgot, i 

U 

Union of Great Britain and Ire- 
land. 152. 

Unitarians, Arnold's curious dis- 
like of. 133. 

United - 92, ci. lis. i:,::. 

154, 157, 171. 

Universities, English, 108, 110, 
111. 

Universities, French, ill. 

Universities, German, 111. 



ty Flair (Thackeray's), •;'.». 
Vanity Fair, newspaper, 174. 
Vaughan, Master of the Temple, 

8. 
Victor Emmanuel, 57, 120. 
Victoria Regia, (Hi. 

/• . I".. 
Virgil, 40, 83. 
Voltaire, 52, 53; compared with 

Homer, 64, 126. 

W 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 61, 94. 
Ward, Dr., 118. 
Ward, Mr. Humphry, 165. 
Warton, Dr., 166. 
Westbury, Lord, 162. 
• Westminster Abbey," 32, 99, 
159; quotation from, 160, 176. 



188 



INDEX 



Whately, Archbishop, 14. 

" When the Lamp is .shattered" 
(Shelley's), L68. 
ghtman, Mr. Justice, 31. 

Wilberforce, Bishop, 72, 73. 

Winchester, 7. L09. 

Winchester, Bishop of, l 

•• Wineof Cyprus " i Mrs. Brown- 
ing's), 27. 

"Wizard nf the North, The, 

Wordsworth, 1, 7. 13, 18, 20, 22 
24, 26, 29, 32, 33, 35, 4". a 
74, 167, L68, 17:;. 175, 176. 



Wright, Mr., 75. 



Young, Lord, 167. 
"Youth of Man, The," 10. 
"Youth Of Nature. The." 40. 



Z 

• Zenith of Conservatism, The," 
158. 



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